Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee is all set to recent her fifth annual budget for the ministry Friday, amid concern over poor progress of sizeable projects and the financial health of the world's second largest rail network short of one management.
With the Vision 2020 document of 2009 expected to represent as the guiding force, the budget is expected to announce new measures to double the network of multiple tracks to 30,000 km. But the subsequent to elections in West Bengal will tie down her arms on fare hikes.
Experts concede all the new trains Banerjee had promised in her two initial budgets for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had kept on flagged off and who passenger amenities had additionally improved during her tenure.
She had announced 122 new trains in 2009-10 and 54 a good deal more a year later.
But what has emerged as a big question mark is the financial health of the network -- actually after her predecessor Lalu Prasad's claims of having dramatically turned the Indian Railways around that became question of case studies in business schools like Harvard.
'For the first time in the history of India, today the minister of railways has achieved the impossible -- she actually made the railways bankrupt,' Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Sitaram Yechury informed reporters in New Delhi.
The budget also cames against the backdrop of the share of Indian Railways in movement of goods, vis a vis truckers, falling from 24.07 percent in 2001-02 to 20.89 percent in 2008-09 and further to around 19 percent survive fiscal.
Officials in Indian Railways, however, said progress was, indeed, making made.
'Work for all the projects, for which the minister had laid the foundation stone or inaugurated, has started and it will be completed within the stipulated timeframe,' alleged a spokesperson for Southern Railways.
'But as the projects are making executed by several authorities or under the public-private partnership model, it is not probable for us to provide progress report of each specific project in detail immediately,' he told IANS.
Indian Railways has a network of 64,099 route km to ferry 18.9 million passengers on 7,000 trains daily according to 6,906 stations. It also runs 4,000 freight trains to carry 850 million tonnes of cargo.
On fare hikes, no one expects any a greater amount of burden on pasengers as Banerjee has set her eyes on becoming the next main minister of West Bengal and might like to keep her steps populist, refraining from any measure that may be seen as anti-people.
The Trinamool Congress leader last Friday foreclosed a meeting with her two ministers of state Bharatsinh Solanki and K. H. Muniyappa and top officials led by Railway Board chairman Vivek Sahai to great tune the budget, which is set to be presented in the Lok Sabha Friday morning.
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With the Vision 2020 document of 2009 expected to represent as the guiding force, the budget is expected to announce new measures to double the network of multiple tracks to 30,000 km. But the subsequent to elections in West Bengal will tie down her arms on fare hikes.
Experts concede all the new trains Banerjee had promised in her two initial budgets for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had kept on flagged off and who passenger amenities had additionally improved during her tenure.
She had announced 122 new trains in 2009-10 and 54 a good deal more a year later.
But what has emerged as a big question mark is the financial health of the network -- actually after her predecessor Lalu Prasad's claims of having dramatically turned the Indian Railways around that became question of case studies in business schools like Harvard.
'For the first time in the history of India, today the minister of railways has achieved the impossible -- she actually made the railways bankrupt,' Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Sitaram Yechury informed reporters in New Delhi.
The budget also cames against the backdrop of the share of Indian Railways in movement of goods, vis a vis truckers, falling from 24.07 percent in 2001-02 to 20.89 percent in 2008-09 and further to around 19 percent survive fiscal.
Officials in Indian Railways, however, said progress was, indeed, making made.
'Work for all the projects, for which the minister had laid the foundation stone or inaugurated, has started and it will be completed within the stipulated timeframe,' alleged a spokesperson for Southern Railways.
'But as the projects are making executed by several authorities or under the public-private partnership model, it is not probable for us to provide progress report of each specific project in detail immediately,' he told IANS.
Indian Railways has a network of 64,099 route km to ferry 18.9 million passengers on 7,000 trains daily according to 6,906 stations. It also runs 4,000 freight trains to carry 850 million tonnes of cargo.
On fare hikes, no one expects any a greater amount of burden on pasengers as Banerjee has set her eyes on becoming the next main minister of West Bengal and might like to keep her steps populist, refraining from any measure that may be seen as anti-people.
The Trinamool Congress leader last Friday foreclosed a meeting with her two ministers of state Bharatsinh Solanki and K. H. Muniyappa and top officials led by Railway Board chairman Vivek Sahai to great tune the budget, which is set to be presented in the Lok Sabha Friday morning.
Read More Here
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