Former Minister of State for Railways and BJP senior leader Bandaru Dattatreya described the Railway Budget 2013-14 presented by Pawan Kumar Bansal in the Parliament on Tuesday as "disappointing" and "anti-people".
Talking to reporters, Dattatreya said that a special fund of Rs. 27,000 crore was given to the Railways while Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister. He demanded that the Centre today give the Railways a special fund of Rs. 25,000 crore.
He said that although the Centre did not increase the tariff openly, it had imposed surcharges on commuters while burdening them.
Dattatreya said that Andhra Pradesh did not gain anything from the budget although the state had nine representatives in the Union Cabinet and 33 Congress MPs hail from here. He asked Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy to explain why this happened.
He said that of 67 Express trains, the state got only two new trains. Further, Andhra Pradesh did not get its due share in the Railway Budget, he said. (INN)
filed in:Railways, Railway Budget, South Central Railway, Pawan Kumar Bansal, BJP, Bandaru Dattatreya