Mamta role as Railways minister under lens of CBI

বর্তমান
১৫-০৯-২০১৪

  - 

        

  · 

 :      ‘’               ,                              ,                ‘ ’  ‘ ’            ’  ,                    ,    ,                              ,      ‘-’ (  ,      )  -       ‘’                                     ,                            ,                                                    ,      ,                                                                    ’            ,                        ‘’  ?      ,                                                            ,                  
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Who benefited from Railways committees set up by Mamta

Should Mamata's Railway committee members also resign?

IANS
Sep 24, 2012 at 02:02am IST

Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress's exit from the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has put question mark over the fate of committees constituted when that party held the railways portfolio.

When Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee joined the UPA in 2009 and took charge of the railway ministry, she constituted some committees and also inducted several intellectuals considered close to her into existing committees.

The committees were retained during the tenures of the next two railway ministers, who too were from the Trinamool Congress - Dinesh Trivedi and Mukul Roy.

Mamata constituted some committees and also inducted several intellectuals considered close to her into existing committees.

Now that Banerjee and Trinamool have walked out of the UPA, some argue that the pro-Banerjee intellectuals must resign on moral grounds. The members of these official committees are entitled to many financial benefits.

"Why are they continuing when their benefactor (Banerjee) is gone? All these posts fall under 'office of profit' and they must immediately resign on moral grounds," Congress Parliamentarian Adhir Chowdhury said.

Banerjee's close aide and painter, Shuvaprasanna heads the Railways Passenger Amenities Committee, which has fellow painter Samir Aich, film director Haranath Chakrabarty and singer Pallab Kirtanya as members.

The Passengers Amenities Committee has, among others the critically acclaimed film director Gautam Ghose too as a member.

There are those who hold that committee membership is no political favour: "These committees and their members are not a result of anybody's benevolence. The committees are constituted through gazette notification by Parliament. And members are not affiliated to any political party," Shuvaprasanna told IANS.

Shuvaprasanna said, "I was asked to give my services for the welfare of the community and if I step down before my tenure ends, wouldn't that be a disservice?"

The painter claimed that he did not avail of any financial benefits from the post.

"It is now for Parliament to decide if they want to renew my term, which is due to expire in a few months," said the acclaimed painter.

Among the committees constituted under Banerjee is the Heritage and Cultural Committee which has actress Saoli Mitra and theatre personality Arpita Ghosh as members.

The financial benefits attached with the posts include a monthly honorarium of Rs.10,000 to the head of the committee and Rs.8,000 per month to members.

Other perks include free travel, and food and lodging when members make official trips.

Refusing to step down, Aich questioned the intentions of those demanding his resignation.

"How is morality attached to being a member of the committee? Moreover, who is Adhir Chowdhury to decide what is my moral obligation," Aich asked.

Read More : Mamta shows Basudev Acharia the door

Mess in Indian Railways by Mamta

BJP holds PM responsible for mess in railways

ITGD Bureau  New Delhi, July 11, 2011 | UPDATED 23:42 IST

Mamata constituted some committees and also inducted several intellectuals considered close to her into existing committees.

BJP on Monday held Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who also holds the Railways portfolio, for the Fatehpur train mishap that left scores of people dead and alleged that lack of political will on the part of UPA had rendered the ministry an "orphan".

"BJP expresses concern over the state of affairs in the Railway Ministry. It has become a victim of coalition politics in both UPA-I and UPA-II. The ministry has become an orphan and is surviving without any protection or guidance," BJP spokesperson Jagat Prakash Nadda said.

The party, led by its president Nitin Gadkari, condoled the death of over 60 people due to derailment of Kalka mail at Fatehpur in Uttar Pradesh on Sunday.

Nadda held Prime Minister Singh, who has kept the Railways portfolio with himself since Mamata Banerjee resigned to become Chief Minister of West Bengal, responsible for the poor state of affairs in the ministry.

"The Prime Minister is squarely responsible for this...

It is his weakness that he never intervened when Lalu Prasad and Mamata Banerjee were running the ministry," he said.

He alleged that the UPA government was "insensitive" and warned that "passing the buck" will not do.

Nadda also blamed former Railway Ministers Mamata Banerjee and Lalu Prasad for the problems being faced by Indian Railways today.

"As Railway Minister in UPA-I, Prasad had made tall claims of profits and given wrong figures. He also projected himself as a management guru at that time. Mamata Banerjee, who succeeded him, deflated his tall claims. But this ministry has now become a joke which is unbearable," Nadda said.

Referring to the recommendations of the H R Khanna committee, appointed by the NDA government to study rail safety and other issues, Nadda asked why it was shelved.

"In 2002-03, the Khanna Committee had recommended a Rail Safety Fund with a corpus of Rs.15,000 crore. The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had sanctioned Rs.17,000 crore after factoring in inflation," he said.

Enumerating other achievements of the Railway ministry during the erstwhile NDA government, the BJP spokesperson maintained that 17,000 KM of rail track renewal, building of 3,000 rail bridges, upgrading of signals at 950 stations and improvement in security and other policy matters were approved by the Vajpayee regime.

He alleged that all these projects were abandoned by the ministry once Lalu Prasad took charge. He further accused Banerjee of contributing her bit to the deterioration of the ministry.

"The Railway Ministry migrated to Kolkata during Mamata Banerjee's time. She had a Vision 2020 but we all know her vision right from the time she took office was something else," Nadda said, alluding to Banerjee's aim of becoming the Chief Minister of West Bengal during her tenure as Railway Minister.

The BJP General Secretary said yesterday's accident was a result of lack of long term planning by the ministry.

"The Minister of State for Railways (Mukul Roy) was not ready to go to the site of the accident. He had to be told by the Prime Minister to go. Railways is suffering due to coalition compulsions. No monitoring of projects is being done. One lakh posts of traffic and security personnel are lying vacant. Political will is needed," Nadda said.

In his condolence message, Gadkari said the government did not take immediate steps to improve rail safety and the situation deteriorated further. He urged the government to take prompt and effective steps for the safety of people.

- With PTI inputs

False promises of Mamta as Railways Minister

Derailed Rail Budget of Mamata: Broken Promises, Forgotten Hope

Tue, 2011-03-01 08:03 Sudipta Bhattacharya

Sudipta Bhattacharya of the department of economics and politics, Santiniketan, assesses Mamata Banerjee's performance as a disastrous railway minister in the backdrop of the 2011 budget.  Cartoon courtesy, The Hindu newspaper. 

When Mamata Banerjee was sworn in power in 2009 she declared her priorities: first, to run the railway viably and profitably. Secondly, to give comfort to passengers and third, to make adequate safety arrangements. Against the backdrop of the rail budget this year, let us see how far she has achieved her goals. 

Bankruptcy

In the budget itself the poor financial health of the railway is mentioned and in her budget speech the railway minister squarely put all the blame on pay commission. However, if we go through figures from the last couple of years, we find that the last railway budget presented by Lalu Prasad in 2007-08 was left with a surplus of Rs. 25000 crores. Since then the magnitude of surplus declined steadily to Rs. 17400 crores in 2009-10, Rs.1328 crores in 2009-10 and ultimately a deficit of Rs.4000 crore. It should be remembered that there is a separate provision of Rail Budget as it is expected that railway should make some surplus and can assist nation’s economy as a whole. But in last couple of budget prepared by Mamata Banerjee it is seen that union government had to subsidize the railway. This year too, Mamata Banerjee sought Rs.40000 crore from Union Government. Sources says she ultimately she managed to get only Rs.20000 crores. The alarming concern that one should get is on seeing the massive decline of operating ratio. Operating ratio is the amount expenditure in order to produce income of Rs.100. During 2007-08 the last year of Lalu Prasad's regime it remained at Rs 75. At present it is Rs 95 which is the highest ever in history. In fact most the bills for the last financial year remained unpaid by the ministry and the burden is to be transferred to the next financial year. This is a trick that ministry of railway adopted to show the operating ratio below 100. Considering all the pending bills the operating ratio must be far high than 100. According to an estimate made by the Indian Express the operating ratio then should be around 115 and 10 out of 16 railway zones have effective operating ratio above 100.

Utter Discomfort

The Railways have become an ever increasing source of irritation for the passengers. The main source of discomfort is the late running of trains. A case study shows that during the first twenty days of February 2011, 700 trains ran late in South-eastern railway. The railway produced enough discomfort in every aspects - cleanliness, food, crowds of unreserved passengers in reserved compartments, relentless entry of male passengers in ladies compartment and defunct role of RPF in all cases.

Safety and Security

There were unprecedented accounts of accidents in last two years resulting in death of 574 people in 250 accidents. This is a very big figure in comparison with Lalu Prasad 's regime. There were many accidents where human casualties was marginally escaped owing to the last minute efficiency of the drivers, because of some miracles and good luck. Mamata Banerjee blamed sabotage for all the cases. The sole case of sabotage proved only in the case of accident Gnaneswari Express derailment where 148 people died. However, the Central Government agency CBI investigated the case and found a Maoist/ Maoist front organisation conspiracy behind that. Consequently many Maoist activists linked with this massacre were arrested. Even then Mamata Banerjee did not lodge any FIR against the Maoists. Rather like all other accidents she blamed CPI(M) behind this massacre. To the utter surprise to everyone she made a joint rally in Lalgarh with the ‘Peoples Committee Against Police Atrocity’ which the judiciary accepted as frontal organization of the Maoists. In that rally the main accused of Gnaneswari express massacre Asit Mahato was seen to roam about, which was reported with photos in the next day newspapers. In all other cases including devastating accident in Sainthia, no case of sabotage was established. In each and every case accidents took place because of the utter callousness of the railway. The engines, coaches and overall machinery become old and the railway ministry did not bother to replace them. On the contrary they in fact overused the old trains. One example – a train named up Agnibina Express starts from Howrah at 18.20 and reaches Asansol at night. Next morning the down Agnibina Express reaches Howrah in the morning and the same train starts for Bolpur as Santiniketan Express at 10 AM and will be back as down Santiniketan Express in the afternoon and becomes Agnibina Express again by evening. There are many such cases. Perhaps the railway ministry failed to understand that machines also needs some rest for proper functioning. According to railway experts most of the accidents that includes metro trains took place due to over use of the engines and rakes. The train lines and bridges also suffer from old age problems and needs replacement, without however, any hope. Apart from the machines, over use of the human capital is also a big factor behind accidents that we will discuss in the next section.

Mounting Vacancies in the Rails as a part of Neoliberal Joblessness.

From 2009 onwards the railway did not bother to fill up any vacancy. Particularly 90 thousand vacancies related to safety and security have not been filled up. With the fact that the number of trains increased from 13 lakhs to 16 lakhs after 1991, the ever declining number of skilled employees particularly attached to safety and security called for an alarming situation. The overuse of the skilled man power is another great cause for the mounting train accidents. It so happened that a driver of a particular train driver after not being relieved from duty for continuous 48 hours had decided to leave trains in the midway and went home. It was a wise as well as desperate decision of him as further performing duty may cause train accident as he felt extremely sleepy.

The railway did not fill up the vacancies precisely because the ideological paradigm of the ministry of railway was well-tuned with neo-liberalism of the union government. As a matter of fact 8-9% growth rate of the Indian economy for last few years were trapped in joblessness and this phase of the Indian economy is called as jobless growth. We have enough reason to believe that Mamata’s assurance of 1.75 lakh of employment generation is nothing but a pre-election gimmick.

New Tracks?

Mamata’s promise for new train lines flopped precisely because she was trapped by her own politics of negation that she applied in Nandigram and Singur. In order to construct new train lines she had to evict land owners on the proposed track and they needed proper compensation and rehabilitation. Mamata desperately announced on 13 April 2010 in Furfura, Hooghly that she would give employment from each family to be evicted. This was a wild promise as she could not even fill up the regular vacancies in her ministry. But making such wild promises Mamata invited fresh trouble as everywhere railway tried to construct new railway lines, people protested heavily demanding new jobs in railway. As a result she could only construct 59 kms of rail line against the previous budgetary promise of 1000 kms.

Where the Promises have Gone?

There were lot of promises spelt in earlier budget that not only remains unfulfilled; there are no mention of these abandoned projects. Take the case of Bengal only. As she felt ‘proud’ to do something for her own state ‘along with other states’. The following projects did not have any progress except receiving foundation stone through some festive cultural programmes: (1) Shalimar Automobile Hub, (2) Kanchrapara EMU Coach Factory, (3) Kishan Vision Project at Singur where 13 out of 16 shops remained permanently closed. (4) Railway Excel Factory at Jalpaiguri, (5) Dankuni Industry for Manufacturing of Petrol and Diesel Component, (6) Noapara Metor Rail Coach Factory, (7) Purulia Anara Factory, (8) Adra Power Project. Most of this industry did not progress after the foundation stone precisely because they did not have approval from Planning Commission, and Montek Singh Ahluwalia categorically said that the projects without the prior approval of Planning Commission should be built from the self-finance / alternative sources of finance by the railway. Some of these industries supposed to be built up on the basis of public-private partnership. However, no private partner showed their interest to make joint collaboration with railway.

In Lieu of Conclusion:

In the history of Indian Railways there has never been such a peculiar, whimsical and retrogressive regime. Mamata is chasing the Chair of the Chief Minister of Bengal. This is the reason she remained absent in Rail Bhavan for most of her tenure. Railway had to waste Rs11 lakh per month from his exchequer only to transport railway files from Dalhi to Kolkata and back. Under this grave situation it is difficult to spell to what amount of timethe ministry of railways needs to implement all the promises spelt in the budget. Nitish Sengupta, a former MP of Mamata’s TMC said that it takes 40 years to implement all the budgetary allocation. But 40 years is a very long time, by when “we would all be dead” as the famous economist Keynes remarked.

courtesy: http://www.pragoti.in/node/4308

Rail Minister indifferent - Leave Passengers Unsafe

Tourists thrashed on train again Falguni Banerjee TNN 13.11.11 Bandel (Hooghly): In yet another example of how unsafe train travel has become, a group of tourists from Bengal was thrashed and abused on the Howrah-bound Bagh Express as it was passing through Uttar Pradesh on Friday morning.      Two children and a woman were injured in the incident.      The tourists, travelling with reserved tickets on a sleeper-class compartment, claimed that there were no security personnel on board when  they came under attack from a group of hoodlums. Railway staff refused to provide any assistance till the train reached Siwan in Bihar, the tourists claimed.      The passengers reached Bandel on Saturday and lodged a complaint with GRP. Eastern Railway officials said the incident occurred before the train entered their jurisdiction. “If we receive a complaint, we shall forward it to those concerned,” an official said.  TRAIN TERROR October 2011: Passengers on Trivandrum-Guwahati Exp complain their berths are taken over by others.  The same month, passengers on UP Darjeeling Mail are looted by goons, who tamper signal to stop train and walk away with loot. No cops on train There were no guards on board  Bandel: Sixty-odd tourists, including women and children, from Kolkata, Hooghly, North and South 24-Parganas, boarded the train from Kathgodam on Thursday. All of them had been allotted berths in coach S7. Around 11am on Friday, when the train was near Khalilabad in UP, 7-8 youngsters entered their compartment and started harassing the women.      “They first asked the women to make space for them on their berths. When the women protested, they started passing lewd remarks and clicking photographs. When the men in the group protested, they were thrashed.      When Manasi Ghosh, a tourist in her 60s, protested, she was pushed so hard that she fell down.      This continued for about three hours but no railway securityman came to their rescue. There were no security personnel on board to whom the tourists could turn to. The tormentors finally got off when the train slowed down outside Nunkhar station in UP. But this was not the end of the ordeal. As the train passed the station (it doesn’t stop there), the miscreants threw stones at the compartment.      “Two children were injured in their hands and a woman received a gash under her eye. There was no doctor on board and we received no assistance when the train stopped at Bhatni Junction (the next station after Nunkhar). We requested train staff to arrange for some food and water, for us but they abused us in return.