Title - Railway safety fund demanded

Senior BJP leader and former railway minister for state B Dattatreya on Tuesday wrote a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanding restoration of the BJP- era Special Railway Safety Fund (SRSF) and allotting Rs 27,000 crore for the same.

He wrote the two-page letter following the inferno in the Chennai-bound Tamilnadu express which claimed 32 lives on Monday and demanded more safety for the commuters travelling in the trains.

The BJP leader strongly objected to railway minister Mukul Roy’s statement in which he termed ‘sabotage’ as a possible reason for the inferno. Dattatreya criticised Roy’s comment as ‘unfortunate’ and ‘baseless’.

To strengthen his point, he recalled the August 2008 Gowthami Express rail accident in which 32 people were charred to death. The railway authorities had stated that it was a conspiracy only to find out later that short circuit was the reason behind the accident.