The Congress described the proposed Ahmedabad-Mumbai high-speed express on Thursday as an “election bullet train”, stressing that the date of its launch had been decided keeping in mind the forthcoming Gujarat Assembly polls.
The laying of foundation stone followed a set pattern of announcing packages and big-ticket projects by the Modi government ahead of every state election, senior Congress leader and former union railway minister Mallikarjun Kharge said.
He also accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of delaying the project, conceived by the erstwhile UPA government, for three-and-a-half years, thus making it “economically unviable”.
He also charged the Modi government with “completely abdicating its responsibility” for safety of passengers, while focussing on this one project.
Maximum accident
Congress spokesperson R.P.N. Singh, too, pointed out that since the BJP had come to power at the Centre in 2014, 259 passengers had been killed and 973 injured in 29 major railway accidents — despite this abysmal track record, the government, he stressed, was paying no attention to railway safety. Indeed, India led the world in railway accidents by recording the maximum number of casualties and accidents in 2016 in any country, the highest in a decade, he said.
The Congress’s accusations came on a day when Mr. Modi and Japanese PM Shinzo Abe launched India's first bullet train project between Ahmedabad and Mumbai. The ambitious ₹1.10 lakh crore project will cut travel time between the two cities from seven hours to less than three. “While the prime minister makes fake claims of railway expansion from the Red Fort, his government has reduced the budgetary allocation for ‘Construction of New Rail Lines' by 12%,” Mr Kharge said.
Mr. Kharge also said that the BJP, that has promised “bullet trains”, has done away with ‘Railway Budget’, a reflection of the status and capacity of the railways. A sum of ₹1.1 lakh crore is required for rail safety, but the Modi government has actually allocated only 5% of that so far, he noted.
