With the West Bengal Assembly election drawing near, Railway Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee gifted a handful of new trains and several new projects to the six districts in north Bengal on Saturday.
She also laid the foundation for the new rail line from Jogbani in India to Biratnagar in Nepal. The project is part of an agreement the Ministry of External Affairs signed with the Nepal government for increasing bilateral trade.
Addressing two back-to-back functions in Cooch Behar and Darjeeling districts, Ms. Banerjee said the Railways had invested more funds in the six districts than the State government had done for the development of north Bengal, and the funds allotted to MPs and MLAs of the Left Front combined.
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Criticising the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front government for allegedly being “apathetic to… bringing about development in the region for the past 35 years,” she wondered how certain CPI(M) leaders could blame the Railway Ministry for not keeping promises. “The CPI(M) has always played divisive politics in the region and created rifts among people in the hills and plains that gave rise to forces like the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation, and activists of greater Cooch Behar…I will appeal to the people in the region not to trust the CPI(M) as the word ‘trust' does not exist in its vocabulary,” she said at Siliguri in Darjeeling district.
Referring to the allegations that she was trying to politicise the Railways, and none of the projects she announced took off for want of funds, Ms. Banerjee charged the CPI(M) leaders with spreading such rumours out of “jealousy” after seeing her set up several railway factories without “killing people or wielding guns,” even as their “solo endeavour of setting up an industry at Singur failed.”
“Who had stopped the CPI(M) from giving new trains to north Bengal or even West Bengal during the five long years it was in the UPA-I government? Even projects started during my last tenure as Railway Minister 10 years ago remain unfinished,” Ms. Banerjee said. The Trinamool Congress, she said, would show how “north Bengal can be transformed into Switzerland” if it came to power.
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Saying that the proposed DMU coach factory to be set up at Sankrail in Howrah district would have to be shifted to either Haldia in Purbo Medinipur district or Andal in Bardhaman district in the face of the CPI(M)'s alleged politically motivated objection, she accused the CPI(M) of trying to derail the Rangpo-Sevoke-Gangtok railway project too.