Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar on Friday said that the money to be spent on India’s first bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad should be spent on improving the city’s local train services and infrastructure.
Mr. Pawar put forward the demand a day after a foot overbridge connected to the CSMT collapsed in Mumbai, killing six persons.
He said, “The bullet train project is in the pipeline. Around ₹1.25 lakh crore is being spent on it. We all believe that the government should spend that money on Mumbai’s local service and other railway circles.”
Mr. Pawar said that instead of focusing on the bullet train project, railway circles like Mumbai-Delhi, Delhi-Kolkata, Kolkata-Chennai and Chennai-Mumbai should be improved. “Mumbai is the financial capital of the country and over one crore commuters use the local trains daily. Changes have to be made considering the safety of people and modifications in the railway stations is a priority.” He said that previous governments should have been careful in planning the city.
‘No action taken’
Addressing the issue of safety audit of bridges in the city, Mr. Pawar said the government should issue a white paper on safety audit of bridges. He drew attention to a letter dated November 5, 2015, written by a Central Railway official to the Executive Engineer of the Public Works Department. Mr. Pawar said, “The letter pointed out the dangerous condition of the Eastern Express Highway road overbridge at Kopri in Thane. It had recommended to immediately stop movement of heavy vehicles. This was four years ago. No action has been taken on it till now.” He said such a callous attitude resulted in incidents like the CSMT overbridge collapse.
Meanwhile, NCP MLA Jitendra Awhad said scrapping the bullet train project would be part of the party’s manifesto and it would be called off within one month of the party attaining power. He said, “The prime concern of the government should be improvement of railway facilities. A blame game by authorities is not the solution. We demand that the bullet train project be cancelled since it is merely a show-off project and a waste of taxpayers’ money.”
Mr. Awhad said a specialised audit and immediate maintenance of dilapidated bridges over railway tracks is required in Mumbai. He said 200 railway-related accidents occur daily in the city.
(With PTI inputs)