Lok Sabha today saw members complaining that successive Railway Ministers have the habit of announcing projects many of which remain unimplemented for decades.
Former Railway Minister Lalu Prasad specifically referred to the East-West Dedicated Freight Corridor and lamented that work on the ambitious project had come to a standstill after he demitted office in 2009.
Participating in a debate on Railway Budget, Prasad insisted that railway needed to raise freight carriage to generate revenue instead of resorting to fare hikes.
Can anyone prove that the railways would turn around only by raising fares, he asked, adding that mere hiking of fares would not help the railways come out of the "mess".
Referring to the proposal to set up a Rail Tariff Authority, he said it would be opposed as "it is a conspiracy to privatise the railways. We will not allow it."
SP's Rewati Raman Singh asked the government to raise freight carriage by slashing the charges, as both he and Prasad asked the government to fix a time-frame to complete all pending projects, instead of announcing new ones.
The RJD chief asked the government to explain why work on Dedicated Freight Corridor had "stopped after I left the Ministry."
Maintaining that he had reduced the operating ratio and converted the largest transport network from loss-making to cash-surplus "without raising fares," he said, "When I spoke of profits, I was challenged and there was an attempt to malign me."
About his interactions with students from Harvard and IIM-Ahmedabad to learn as to how he turned around the railways, he said, "I was asked what will happen after I leave. I said I have set the course and my successors will follow...But the railways is again in a mess."
Prasad said, "Every minister takes own course and blames each other. I will not name anybody.
