Suresh Prabhu offers to quit, Railway Board gets new chairman
PM yet to agree to minister’s request, but a huge shake-up in the ministry has brought in new faces
Heads have started rolling at Rail Bhavan in New Delhi. On Wednesday, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu tweeted after meeting Prime Minister Modi that he has offered to resign taking “moral responsibility” for two recent train derailments, adding, “PM has asked me to wait.”
There were more tweets. “I am extremely pained by the unfortunate accidents, injuries to passengers and loss of precious lives. It has caused me deep anguish,” the minister said in another tweet.
Prabhu’s reference was to the Kafiyat Express derailment in Auraiya district of Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday, wounding 70-plus passengers and the derailment of the Utkal Express at Khatauli in UP’s Muzaffarnagar district on Saturday in which 22 died and scores were injured.
Accountability is a good system in government, and the Prime Minister will take a call on the “request” made by the Railway Minister, Union Minister Arun Jaitley said, hours after Suresh Prabhu indicated that he has offered to quit.
Some of Prabhu’s tweets on Wednesday were emotional, too. “In less than three years as minister, I have devoted my blood and sweat for the betterment of the Railways,” he tweeted.” In another one, Prabhu says, “New India envisoned by PM deserves a Rlys which is efficient and modern. I promise that is the path on which Rlys is progressing now...Under leadership of PM, tried 2(to) overcome decades of neglect thru systemic reforms in all areas leading 2(to) unprecedented investment & milestones.”
Prabhu is believed to have offered his resignation to the Prime Minister immediately after a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. He decided to quit taking moral responsibility after Railway Board chairman Aditya Kumar Mittal, whom he had sent on leave on Sunday, resigned ahead of his retirement this month-end.
The government quickly filled Mittal's vacancy by shifting Ashwani Lohani, a railway engineer serving as Chairman and Managing Director of Air India since September 2015, as the new Railway Board chairman.
At Air India, his vacancy was filled by Rajiv Bansal, additional secretary in the Petroleum Ministry. Bansal is an IAS officer of the 1988 batch.
In the past, Lohani has been the Managing Director and Commissioner of Madhya Pradesh tourism as also CMD of the India Tourism Development Corporation besides serving in the Railways in different capacity, including as DRM Delhi.
The Opposition has been keeping up the pressure to get Prabhu removed. Congress spokesman Manish Tewari reacted sharply to the news of Mittal's stepping down, asserting at an AICC press briefing that asking him to quit was the “worst kind of tokenism”.
“Prabhu should resign immediately if he has iota of morality left in him. It is worst kind of tokenism asking Rail Board chairman or any other official to step aside,” Tewari said, noting that during a period of 38 months, 28 rail accidents occurred, killing over 300 people and leaving 800 others injured.