The Railway Budget once again saw Mamata Banerjee and Mukul Roy running on different tracks with the former on Thursday dubbing Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu’s budgetary speech as a “high sounding nothing aimed at befooling people”, while the latter hailing the Government’s decision not to increase fare as a “quite praiseworthy effort.”
The Trinamool leadership in Kolkata made things worse in its attempt to cloak the embarrassment and ended up making a grand exhibition of the widening rift between the two camps led by the Chief Minister and her once man Friday.
This when senior leader and State Minister Subroto Mukherjee said “no comments on national issues made by any leader other than Saugato Roy, Derek O’Brien and the leadership in Kolkata will be regarded as party’s views.”
While Roy said that the Railway Budget had ingredients for praise, Banerjee dubbed it “anti-people and anti-development,” wondering “why they have increased the fare when they already increased it after coming to power.”
Asking “whom the Centre is trying to make fool ofIJ” the Bengal Chief Minister said, “instead of taking credit for not hiking Railway fare, they should have decreased fare commensurate to the reduced diesel prices in international market.”