Govt has no plan to privatise Railways: Ashwini Vaishnaw in Rajya Sabha

The Union minister addressed both Houses of Parliament on Thursday.

In response to the debate on the rail budget in the Rajya Sabha, Vaishnaw said there was no discrimination against any region or state as far as funds and projects were concerned.

On employment, Vaishnaw said against 2,42,709 appointments between 2009-14, Railways provided jobs to 3,44,646 individuals since 2014, adding the process to make another 1,40,713 appointments is on.

He said the annual investment in Railways between 2009-14 was Rs 45,980 crores, which was doubled by the BJP government to Rs 99,511 crores in 2014. “And the budget, too, has been increasing. Today it stands at Rs 2,45,800 crores,’’ he said.

Responding to the criticism of the Bullet Train project, he said, “Twenty-five countries have already adopted high speed trains. The E5 series of trains that Japan is running currently is what will be brought to India. The geo-technical investigation of every stretch of soil has been meticulously done,’’ he said.

Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda made a rare appearance in the Rajya Sabha, urging the Railway Minister to complete several projects in Karnataka.

TMC MP Derek O’Brien said that railway ministers in the past came up with “big ideas’’ that brought change in the functioning of the railways, which translated into amenities for passengers. “Between 2014-21, what is the one big idea that this government has come up with that will sustain the passage of time?’’said O’Brien, while calling the Vande Bharat trains and the proposed Ahmedabad-Mumbai Bullet Train BJP government’s “vanity projects’’.

He also alleged bias in the disbursal of funds and allotment of projects. “There are 12-13 railway projects in Bengal and only a fund allotment of Rs 1,000 crores. Whenever we question this, the ministry blames it on the state government’s inability to acquire land. It is worse in the Southern Railways that has been allotted approximately Rs 400 crores against nearly Rs 30,000 crores for the North,’’ he said.

In response, BJP MP Roopa Ganguly said it was during Mamata Banerjee’s tenure as Railway Minister that the Railways was pushed into losses.

Birendra Prasad Baishya of the AGP said the Rs 11,428-crore outlay for the north-eastern states was the highest ever outlay for the region.