Mamata Banerjee has been called ‘Railway Minister for West Bengal’, because of her ‘Rail Budgets’ showered disproportionately higher largesse on her home state West Bengal alone. In 2009-10 budget, she started 19 new trains for WB alone, shifted some proposed factories from Bihar to WB (revenge on Lalu Prasad), and also announced a mega power plant for the state – schemes for other states were muted. In 2010-11, it got better: 40 out of 99 new trains were announced for Bengal alone in the Rail Budget! In fact her intentions were made clear in a few days after she became the Rail Minister – she shifted the Railway Ministry itself, from New Delhi to Kolkata! This was done in order to enable her to give her proper time and attention to the upcoming state assembly elections in WB!
Now somewhere her recklessness had to bite us. And it not only bit us, but also killed, injured and mutilated us. If not to all of us; then to a lot of us for sure. Read this statistic:
Mamata’s track record in Railways: 14 major railway accidents claiming over 700 lives in the past 2 years.
Read detailed analysis here: http://tinyurl.com/3e5q93a It comments on other grave issues like impact on Railway’s profitability due to her political moves, to count as one.
Now some people said that a large part of these accidents and deaths were the results of Naxal attacks, which were also a responsibility of the state govt. Hence Mamata should not be held responsible for this pathetic performance. Here is my reply:
Only Gyaneshwari Express was a major Naxal attack. And even in that, the actual casualty happened when a goods train came and collided with the derailed passenger train. Naxals didn’t want to kill people – they had only derailed it. They didn’t know that the driver of goods train would be blind, or any rescue for the derailed train would be lame. In any case 170 dead in Gyaneshwari still leaves a mammoth 530 to be counted for other accidents. And I am not counting accidents without any deaths yet; or the injuries, or the minor rail accidents.
Just view this page; a mere glance tells something horribly wrong went under her period. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_rail_incidents
Railways was never her “priority”. It was her mere “means” to get power in Kolkata. She never counted the dead and injured, all she counted was the new trains she started for West Bengal. And we had to bear the consequences for her “priority mismatch”…
Thank God that she won the West Bengal elections. Let us hope the new Rail Minister has some wider vision.
