Title - ‘Railways not responsible for rise in onion prices’

Minister passes the blame on Agriculture Minister Pawar
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Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal on Thursday squarely passed the blame on Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar for the steep rise in onion prices.Acknowledging the receipt of a letter from Mr. Pawar holding the poor availability of freight rakes as responsible for causing scarcity of onions, particularly in northern parts of India,Mr. Bansal rebutted the charge, leaving the Agriculture Ministry to deal with the crisis.Mr. Bansal said the Railways provided 50 rakes to Maharashtra in January as against its capacity to load a rake or two daily. In February, nine rakes have been made available to transport onions. They now need about nine rakes which would be made available over the next four or five days on the basis of two per day.The Railway Minister remained unmoved when reporters brought to his notice that Mr. Pawar had taken up the matter with the Cabinet Secretary and said he had received a letter from Mr. Pawar on this issue. He said the facts speak for themselves.However, regarding the possibility of a hike in passenger and freight rates, Mr. Bansal kept the guessing clock ticking till he presents his budget on February 26. “You will have to wait till February 26. But that does not mean I’m allowing you to guess either way on whether it will happen or not,” he cautioned.

He, however, categorically stated that the Railways, as a commercial organisation, had to raise money through fare hikes and the need for money was not only to fulfil the demands being raised, but also to meet the fuel cost made dear by the huge hike in diesel prices for bulk purchasers like the Railways.

Mr. Bansal said efforts were on to garner non-traffic revenue as well. One of them is through PPP mode of execution of projects, three of which he announced which have been cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on Thursday.

The Centre cleared the new 121.7 km long broad gauge line between Gevra Road and Pendra Road under the South East Central Railway at an estimated cost of Rs. 838.02 crore. The concessionaire is being promised a rate of return of 22.39 per cent.

The 63 km long new broad gauge line aims to connect the virgin coal belt of Raigarh in Chhattisgarh with the rail network at Bhupedopur at an estimated cost of Rs. 379.08 crore. The Railways are promising a rate of return of 26.11 per cent to the prospective concessionaire.

The doubling of 247.73 km long broad gauge line between Palanpur and Samakhiali will be executed at an estimated cost of Rs. 1,266.89 crore, with a promised rate of return of 17.33 per cent.

Mr. Bansal, however, has set aside the proposal of then Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee for creating a corpus of Rs. 5 lakh crore to execute projects including the pending ones which need about 1.5 lakh crore. He said it was inconceivable to raise such an amount.

Regarding the criticism of the Railways by a Parliamentary panel on the issue of safety, Mr. Bansal said he had not gone through the report yet.

Railway Board chairman Vinay Mittal clarified that the Railway Safety Commissioner was free to take up the issue of serious matters for investigation and usually leave those to the Zonal Railways to inspect when the cause of accident was apparent.