Title - Rail minister from south

After a long time, the railway portfolio has come to a minister from the south.  The last South Indian to hold the portfolio was C K Jaffer Sherieff from 1991 to 1995. Then for a brief period, it was Suresh Kalmadi - a Kannadiga settled in Maharashtra - who held independent charge of the portfolio. Since then it has remained in the east with Ram Vilas Paswan, Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad (all from Bihar), Mamata Banerjee, Dinesh Trivedi and Mukul Roy (all from West Bengal)  holding the portfolio from 1996 to 2012. In the past nine months, it  was held by C P Joshi and Pawan Bansal for brief periods.

Now Mallikarjuna Kharge of Karnataka  would run the railways in the final year of the UPA government.  However there have been ministers of state from southern states, but they had limited operational powers under dominating railway ministers.

All the southern states have been complaining of neglect by the railways, as the ministry was long held by ministers from north and eastern India. Yet some of the southern stalwarts who held the portfolio have done good work.  Kengal Hanumanthaiah initiated the proposal of linking Kashmir to Kanyakumari in the 1970s. His dream has become a reality four decades later with the completion of the railway tunnel under Pir Panjal mountain range which separates Kashmir valley from rest of the country. However one small stretch remains in Jammu which when completed will allow a train to run from Kanyakumari to Srinagar from next year. Jaffer Sherieff came up with the One Gauge project where he gave a push to conversion of meter and narrow gauge tracks into broad gauge. There are some stretches left. Another railway minister from south, though elected from Bihar, was George Fernandes whose dream project was Konkan railways.

Kharge is frank that he has a limited window to take up such mega projects.  The railway budget for the current year has already been approved by the parliament, and there is little scope to announce new projects.

Unlike railways, the southern states have had ministers holding road transport and shipping portfolios more often. Now road transport has been given to Oscar Fernandes, who has promised to clear up the mega road projects which have been stuck due to lack of bidding contractors. Fernandes has got cabinet approval for road building companies to sell their stakes midway through project time and he hopes there will be more liquidity. During UPA1, this portfolio, along with shipping, was held by DMK's T R Baalu, whose obsession was the Sethusamudram project, subject to litigation and agitation. Now shipping is with G K Vasan of Congress under whose watch the Vallarpadom project got completed. 

With three key transport infrastructure ministries with Congress politicians from the south, it would be interesting to see if Kerala and other southern states pitch for more funds for their projects. There are Congress chief ministers in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.


Tailpiece:  Congress is bargaining hard with Jharkand Mukti Morcha to support a JMM-led government in the state, which is under President's rule now. Congress wants JMM to cede at least seven of the 14 Lok Sabha seats for the 2014 general elections, apart from having a deputy chief minister from the Congress. While RJD would be part of government in Jharkand, in neighbouring Bihar, Congress is supporting RJD's rival Janata Dal (united).