MODI IS PUTTING HIS SUCCESS STAMP ON INCOMPLETE TASKS
With the 2019 Lok Sabha elections approaching fast, Prime Minister Modi has devised a new method of claiming success for schemes and projects his government launched but which are nowhere near completion.
He did it on May 27 when he inaugurated a 9-km stretch of a road to claim credit for the 96-km Delhi-Meerut Expressway that may still take another two years to complete. The same day he also declared open the eastern peripheral road around the capital, ignoring the construction still not complete.
His latest fiat is to declare open a section of the Railways' western dedicated freight corridor on August 15 and hype it as the success of the 1504-km corridor. What will actually become operational on the Independence Day is just a 190-km part of the corridor between Ateli in Haryana and Phulera in Rajasthan.
As much as 70 per cent of the construction is complete in this part of the corridor and the PM asked the railway officials two weeks ago why not organise a function to flag it off.
It is another matter that freight trains will not run at faster speed until the complete corridor is ready and that may take at least another three years. The government had set the target of operationalising this corridor in December 2020, but inauguration of the 190-km stretch would be hailed as moving at a much faster speed than the target.
Modi ordered piecemeal inauguration of parts of the corridor as and when they are ready, after being told that even land acquisition for the project has not been completed in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.
He was told by the engineers of the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India which is executing the eastern freight corridor that they could do little until the state governments acquire the land and transfers it to them.
Even in the sections of the corridor, where the land had been acquired long ago, the progress was only 8-16%. The worst affected sections include 186 km between Vaitrana and Sachin in Gujarat, 133 km between Sachin and Vadodara and 102 km between Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust and Vaitran in Maharashtra.