RailEnquiry

From former Prime Minister Deve Gowda to former Railway Minister Lalu Prasad, there were complaints galore over the unfinished projects of the Indian Railways, announced with much flourish during the annual rail budgets and forgotten thereafter. Some MPs alleged that the projects remain unfinished as the booster-dose of funds to reach the finishing line is never allocated by the Railway Minister(s) unless it is his or her own state or constituency that benefited from the project. Taking part in the debate on Rail Budget in the Lok Sabha on Monday, Bihar’s Purvi Champaram MP Radha Mohan took a dig at the former railway minister from his own state, Lalu. He recounted how a new route flagged off by then Railway Minister Nitish Kumar to commemorate Mahatma Gandhi’s Champaran legacy was diverted to Chapra by subsequent Railway Minister Lalu Prasad, to serve his own constituency.Mohan drew much laughter when he told the incumbent Railway Minister Pawan Bansal that he has no issues about the latter giving projects and trains to Sonia Gandhi’s Rae Bareli in UP as long he also remembers Mahatma Gandhi’s Champaran in Bihar.  CPM MP M B Rajesh complained about how all members of Kerala were of the opinion that the state has been largely overlooked in Bansal’s budget. SP’s Rewati Raman Singh asked the government to to fix a time-frame to complete all pending projects, instead of announcing new ones. But it was JD(S) leader Deve Gowda’s long list that raised maximum eyebrows. He listed Railways projects that he had got initiated as the Prime Minister which are still incomplete. “I am often asked by my people (Karnataka) why I don’t speak on the Railway budget, well, this is the reason,” he said, citing pending projects in his state over decades.Even Lalu Prasad complained about successive Railway Ministers’ (he includes himself) habit of announcing projects, many of which remain unimplemented for decades.  He 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 fares,” he asked, adding that mere hiking of fares would not help the Railways come out of the “mess”.The RJD chief asked the government to explain why work on Freight Corridor had stopped after he left the ministry.