Pedestrian, Disappointing: JP On Railway Budget

"Status quoist, pedestrian and disappointing" - that was how Lok Satta Party national president Jayaprakash Narayan reacted to the Railway Budget 2013-14 presented to the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

In a media statement, JP said that the union government "has neither the will nor imagination to make transport network the engine of growth".

"China has just completed a 2,600-km-long high-speed railway track which can be covered in just eight hours, while we continue to live with antiquated infrastructure," he lamented.

JP said that new projects are being announced even as projects worth Rs. 2 lakh crore are pending.

"The railways do not have funds to modernize signals, leave alone create high-speed rail networks," he said.

JP pointed out that the freight handled by the railways has slumped to less than 20% now from 80% at the time of Independence.

"The diversion of traffic to road networks has forced the country to squander precious foreign exchange on the import of petroleum products for facilitating road traffic," he observed.

He said, "The Indian economy is crippled as transport and power, the two lynchpins of growth, are in a shambles."

Lok Satta Party state general secretary Katari Srinivasa Rao observed that execution of the second phase of the MMTS in Hyderabad does not find a place in the budget.

"Similarly, there is no reference to the development of Tirupati and Secunderabad as world-class railway stations, a promise made in the previous year's budget. The long-pending and popular request for inclusion of the Visakhapatnam division in the South Central Railway has not been addressed," he said.

He also said that the Union Railway Minister did not focus on projects nearing completion. (INN)