Demanding a rollback of the hike in rail fares, the Trinamool Congress on Monday organised a protest march from central Kolkata’s Raja Subodh Mallick Square to the Gandhiji statue on Mayo Road.
Party leaders claimed that the issue of hiking fares was not brought out for discussion in Parliament.
“The ruling party at the Centre [the Bharatiya Janata Party] had promised to bring ache din [good days] if they were elected. Now that they are in power, they have hiked rail fares even before presenting the Rail Budget. No government has increased rail fares without prior discussion in Parliament. They have conspired to come to power by playing on people’s aspirations of a stable government,” said Trinamool all-India general secretary Mukul Roy.
Raising slogans against the BJP-led government at the Centre, about 12,000 party members walked almost 3 km to protest against the BJP government ’s decision to increase passenger fares by 14.2 per cent and freight charges by 6.5 per cent.
The protest march saw the participation of State Transport Minister Madan Mitra, Minister for Urban Development and Municipal Affairs Firhad Hakim and MPs Sudip Bandopadhyay, Subrata Bakshi, Kalyan Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee and others.
State Chief Minister and party chief Mamata Banerjee has been the Railway Minister for two tenures. In 2012, when her party’s Dinesh Trivedi hiked rail fares while presenting the Railway Budget, he was forced to resign and was replaced by Mr. Roy. Mr. Roy was eventually replaced with C.P. Joshi when the Trinamool Congress pulled out of the United Progressive Alliance-led government at the Centre in 2012.
“The ruling party came to power at the Centre with an overwhelming majority, making us hope that they would work for the people. We want a rollback on the rail fares. Monthly train ticket rates have almost doubled. This is taxing the common man,” Mr. Bandopadhay said.
Recalling that Mr. Trivedi had to resign when he tried to increase rail fares, Mr. Roy said: “The Railways is not a corporate enterprise, it is a social enterprise. You cannot milk people in the name of providing them with security and better facilities.”
The party announced week-long protests here, in neighbouring city Howrah and Tripura.
