Minister for Eastern Railways
Railways continues to hurtle towards disaster but the man in charge, Mukul Roy, is often absent from Delhi. His predecessor Dinesh Trivedi says the Prime Minister is to blame for not removing Roy.
Railways is hurtling towards imminent disaster but the man in charge, Mukul Roy, is often absent from Delhi. His predecessor Dinesh Trivedi says the Prime Minister is to blame for not removing Roy.
On August 6, Railway Minister Mukul Roy was on a rare visit to Delhi. His party could not afford to be absent from the UPA lunch on the eve of the Vice- President Hamid Ansari’s re- election. His office staff placed a thick pile of long pending files on his desk at Rail Bhavan hoping he would read and sign them. Among them were files which would make the daily journey of 23 million passengers safer. Some pertained to procurement of crucial safety- related material including brake blocks for coaches, cables for signalling, sleepers and hydraulic cutters for faster accident relief. With the Railways running into losses to the tune of Rs 16,000 crore, there is no money for track renewal, gauge conversion and signal modernisation, making rail travel perilous. There is a backlog of 126,000 vacancies in the safety category. Scarcity of items due to pending files is making it worse. Also waiting for the minister were files regarding the appointment of four general managers, including that of Southern Railway, where disaster struck on July 30 when a coach of the DelhiChennai Tamil Nadu Express caught fire, charring 35 passengers to death.
Roy did visit his office but the files remained unsigned. He had a quick meeting with the Chairman, Railway Board ( CRB), Vinay Mittal and rushed back to his Delhi home where the Trinamool Congress ( TMC) was to hold its parliamentary meeting. Nobody knows when Roy will visit Rail Bhavan next. The minister visited the Bhavan on August 2 as well, to sign an MoU with Belgium for cooperation on modernisation of railways of both countries. The files remained unattended. Party work claimed his time in Delhi. In nearly five months as railway minister, Roy has shown up at Rail Bhavan less than 20 times, averaging about four days a month. His visits mostly coincide with his political trips to Delhi. Railway officials hope he will be seen more regularly at Rail Bhavan now that the Parliament session has begun on August 8. But though Roy attended Parliament on August 9 and August 14, he did not turn up at Rail Bhavan. In fact, Janata Dal ( United)’ s Sharad Yadav raised the issue of railway safety during zero hour on August 14, expressing concern about the crumbling infrastructure. Looking at Roy, Yadav dripped sarcasm as he said, “Aap kabhi- kabhi Dilli bhi aa jaya kijiye ( You should come to Delhi, at least occasionally).”
In July, Roy attended to railway- related work in Delhi only on four occasions. On July 6, he spent just enough time to unveil a cleanliness drive of stations undertaken with the tourism ministry. On July 14, he made a half- day trip to attend the UPA lunch organised to discuss the vice- presidential candidate. On July 24 and 25, again, he made brief appearances in Rail Bhavan even as his main assignment was to accompany his party chief Mamata Banerjee for President Pranab Mukherjee’s swearing in. Roy did not turn up for the important meeting of Empowered Group of Ministers on drought on July 31. According to sources, he does not come
for the weekly meetings of the Railway Board, held every Wednesday.
Roy did, however, make it to Nellore on July 30, more than 12 hours after the accident. Soon after he got off the special luxury saloon, Roy promptly blamed the accident on “sabotage”. Forensic officials investigating the cause of fire say the probable cause was a short circuit. If the final report confirms it, it is a reflection of poor maintenance by the Railways because it implies the circuit breaker that should have come into play during the short circuit did not, leading to the fire.
Eminent scientist Anil Kakodkar, who headed the High Level Safety Review Committee of the Railways constituted by then minister Dinesh Trivedi in August 2011, had recommended an investment of at least Rs 100,000 crore to upgrade safety- related infrastructure, focusing on the 19,000 km high density route. In his February 2012 report, Kakodkar said that Railways’ finances were on the “brink of collapse” and suggested a passenger fare hike, imposing safety cess on passengers, deferred dividend, road cess and matching grant by the Centre. He favoured expedited implementation of Advanced Signalling System, Train Protection Warning System and elimination of unmanned crossings, which account for 40 per cent casualties in rail accidents.
Trivedi was shown the door when he tried to increase passenger fares against Banerjee’s wishes. However, he did manage to finalise a Cabinet note proposing FDI to build dedicated railway lines for industries, connecting coal and iron ore mines to the main network. The proposal is pending before the Cabinet for clearance. Trivedi, now out of the firing line, claims that “in Indian Railways there are no accidents but 100 per cent negligence”. He says the Railway Board is loyal to the minister and not to Railways. “If the minister wants them to say that the cause of accident is sabotage, the Board will say it,” Trivedi told INDIA TODAY.
Trivedi had famously said after he resigned in March 2012 that he would not want his family to travel on Indian trains because they were not safe. He stands by his statement. “Travelling by rail is not safe. There is hardly any maintenance of trains, tracks, signals or other infrastructure. The railway edifice is crumbling,” he cautions. The former railway minister says more
than his successor Roy, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is to be blamed: “Why blame the minister? If a player does not perform, the captain should remove him. If he does not, then the captain is to be blamed.” He adds, “The whole nation should not be made to pay for coalition politics. Not even one death on the tracks is acceptable.”
A senior railway official says there is shortage of crucial materials like pandrol safety clips ( used to join sleepers and rails), brake blocks ( each coach has 16 of them and they last about six months) and couplers ( used to link coaches with one another). “The maintenance staff is forced to remove these items from stationary trains and use them wherever required. The same material is being circulated in different trains,” he reveals. Incidentally, the file for procurement of brake blocks is pending with Roy.
It is one thing being an absent railway minister, and quite another being a negligent one. By all accounts, Roy is just not interested in railway affairs. “Mamata was known to be a non- resident railway minister but she at least took some minimal interest in railway functioning. Roy, on the other hand, is
IN NEARLYFIVE MONTHS AS MINISTER, ROYHAS SHOWN UPATRAILBHAVAN LESS THAN 20 TIMES, AVERAGING ABOUTFOUR DAYS AMONTH.
completely uninterested and indifferent,” claims a Railway Board member.
While crucial files remain pending at Rail Bhavan, there are others which are sent to Kolkata regularly for the minister’s signature. These mostly pertain to projects in West Bengal that Banerjee wants to be cleared as soon as possible. While the minister misses the weekly Railway Board meeting in the Capital, he regularly attends the weekly coordination committee meetings of Eastern and South- Eastern Railway, which serve West Bengal. According to sources, to accord advantage to the proposed locomotive unit at Dankuni, Roy has unofficially put two projects— electrical and diesel locomotive units at Madhepura and Marhaura in Bihar— on the backburner.
While Roy could not be contacted despite repeated attempts by INDIA TODAY, sources close to him claim that his physical presence is not required to run the ministry in New Delhi. “He has a more important role in Kolkata as TMC general secretary. He has to ensure that the party is in a position to go solo in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. What happened to Lalu Yadav when he shifted base from Bihar to Delhi as railway minister? He went from 24 seats to four in the state,” says Roy’s aide. Regarding rail safety, he puts the onus on the Railway Board bureaucracy. CRB Mittal claims that considering Railways operates over 19,000 trains per day, the overall safety record is not that bad: “The number of accidents per million kilometres of train travel is 0.14 as per 2011- 12 figures, down from 0.44 in 2002- 03.” He adds that to bring down the accident rate further, “Railways need large- scale technology upgrade and infusion of funds”. Precisely what the Kakodkar committee had recommended. Quizzed about the report at a function in Kolkata in May, Roy reacted, “Reports are not sacrosanct.” It is clear that for Roy, party and power come before railway safety.