Rail Budget illusionary, insipid: Opposition

The Opposition on Tuesday dubbed the Railway Budget as 'illusionary' and 'insipid' and said it would hit the common man.

Reacting to the proposals in the Railway Budget for 2002-03, they said it would not benefit the farmers and the common man.

"It is a beaten track budget lacking vision and will not help in expanding the Railways," Congress Deputy Leader in Lok Sabha Shivraj Patil said.

"It is an illusion. Let us see the reality," Congress MP Renuka Chaudhury said adding it was to be seen if the rationalisation of freight would help farmers reach their produce to consumers.

CPI-M MP Nilotpal Basu described it as the "same hackneyed story" and said the increase in tariff will have an impact on the price of essential commodities.

His party colleague Rupchand Pal said though rail safety was a major concern, imposing surcharge on this would have a serious impact on the pocket of the common man.

Trinamool Congress chief and former Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee sharply reacted to the Rail Budget saying that this could not be dubbed as a 'pro-people' one.

In a hard-hitting comment on the Railway Budget presented by Railway Minister Nitish Kumar, Banerjee said, ''This is a positive budget for the business class and negative one for the common people''.

She said the railway minister had chosen the "cheap" option of passing the burden on the common people by increasing passenger fares and hiking freight charges on all essential commodities.

Stating that as railway minister she had tried to generate revenue through non-traditional sources, Banerjee said the railway minister had reduced the fare of AC first class and hiked the fare of AC chair car mostly availed by the students and common people.

"I don't believe in the politics of putting burden on common people and sparing the upper class. I only understand the people's economics and not this which believes in giving relief to the upper class who constitute one per cent'', she said.

Banerjee also said unlike her, Kumar had got the budgetary support from the government as the railway minister and other key ministers including finance and defence were all from Bihar.

Despite her adverse reaction, the Trinamool Congress leader, however, said her party would not quit the ruling NDA. ''I will give my opinion to the NDA'', she said.

Banerjee also lambasted Nitish Kumar's Budget for depriving West Bengal in an unprecedented manner by reducing the allocations for the state by more than two-thirds.

"No new projects have been sanctioned for the state. I had set rolling each of the projects mentioned by him,'' she said. She also came down heavily on the CPI-M and Congress MPs from the state for not raising their voice of protest during Kumar's speech.

''They only kept mum. But they were more than once up in arms against me when I presented two budgets.'

Congress termed the Railway Budget as "directionless and status quoist" lacking dynamism to fulfil the objectives of growth. "This is primarily an accountants budget. It is status quoist. There is neither dynamism nor direction. Therefore, this budget does not fulfil the objective of growth", party spokesman S Jaipal Reddy said.

The budget speech, he says, showed that the financial health of the Railways was going from "bad to worse", which was evident from the fact that the gross traffic receipts were likely to fall short of Rs 16.49 billion during the current financial year.

Apart from this, there was also a net reduction in the actual plan expenditure by Rs 16 billion, he said adding these two figures were enough to highlight the health of the Railways finance.

Besides, Reddy said in the name of rationalisation Railway Minister Nitish Kumar did take recourse to freight increase which is expected to yeild Rs 4 billion in the 2002-2003 fiscal year.

"In the past we have seen that any increase in the freight is unhealthy because of the transition of traffic from railways to roads. This trend should have been reversed in this budget", he said.

YOU MAY ALSO WANT TO READ:
The Rail Budget 2002-03
The Rediff Budget Special
The Economic Survey 2001-02
Run-Up To The Budget
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