Beaten track

If anyone has any doubts about who really calls the shots in the Railway ministry ever since Trinamool’s Mukul Roy replaced Dinesh Trivedi, they would have been put to rest at a recent function in Arambagh in West Bengal. The event, to inaugurate a new railway line in the district, was held at a small ground but the organisers had not protected the gathering from the sun. This omission so enraged state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee that she – not her protégé Roy – made the divisional railway manager Partha Sarathi Mandal apologise to the crowd for causing them discomfort. Partially mollified, the chief minister was heard saying, “It seems that the state will have to take charge of things during such events.”