UPA partner NCP on Monday expressed its displeasure over the “injustice” to Maharashtra in the Railway Budget and hoped that the State would get a fair deal when Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal replies on Tuesday to the discussion in the lok Sabha.
Participating in the debate on Railway Budget, Samir Bhujbal (NCP) said people had hoped that Maharashtra would get a fair share in the budget as Congress has got back the portfolio after several years. “It is injustice to Maharashtra. Our expectations regarding Mumbai and Maharashtra were not fulfilled”, he said.
The lok Sabha also saw members complaining that successive Railway Ministers have the habit of announcing projects many of which remain unimplemented for decades. Former Railway Minister lalu Prasad specifically referred to the East-West Dedicated Freight Corridor and lamented that work on the ambitious project had come to a standstill after he demitted office in 2009.
Prasad insisted that railways needed to raise freight carriage to generate revenue instead of resorting to fare hikes. Can anyone prove that the railways would turn around only by raising faresIJ he asked, adding that mere hiking of fares would not help railways come out of the “mess”. He opposed the proposal to set up a Rail Tariff Authority, saying “it is a conspiracy to privatise the railways”.
Rewati Raman Singh (Samajwadi Party) asked the Government to raise freight carriage by slashing the charges, as both he and Prasad asked the Government to fix a time-frame to complete all pending projects, instead of announcing new ones.
Singh sought a complete revamp of the railways, saying countries like China, Japan and Korea, which had started building the railway network much after India did, had developed very advanced system. “But we are operating a 19th century system in the 21st century,” he said.
lalit Mohan Suklabaidya (Congs), Saugata Roy (TMC), EG Sugavanam (DMK), Chandrakant Raghunath Patil (BJP), ET Mohammed Basheer (IUMl), Sharifuddin Shariq (J&KNC), Nama Nageswara Rao (TDP), P lingam (CPI), Ashok Tanwar (Cong) and others also participated in the debate.