Railway Budget leaves the
district in the cold
The interim Union railway
budget presented on Wednesday failed to address any of the pressing needs of
the district, leaving the stakeholders fuming.
As most of the previous
rail budgets had left the district in the cold, bare minimum was expected this
time around especially since it was an interim exercise. However, the
stakeholders found the budget disappointing despite setting the bar of
expectations very low.
P. Rajeev, MP, said the
budget had turned out to be one of the worst for the district. “The
longstanding demand to develop the old railway station as a hub of suburban
railway network has been neglected despite taking up the matter with the
Ministry of Railways and the railway board,” he told The Hindu.
The demand for developing
Tripunithura railway station as the eastern entry to the district and
Kalamassery as a hub of freight transport considering the potential of the
Vallarpadam International Container Transshipment Terminal has also been turned
down.
The budget had been silent
on the proposals to develop south railway station into a world class one and
introduction of automated signal system at least in the Ernakulam-Thrissur
sector, Mr. Rajeev said.
Passengers from the
district may benefit from the trains – one to Bangalore, which is a premier one
and another to Nizamuddin – that operates twice a week from Thiruvananthapuram.
Paul Manvettom, president
of All Kerala Railway Users’ Association, said the introduction of a premium
train in the Thiruvananthapuram-Bangalore sector, which passes through
Ernakulam, with a variable fare depending on occupancy and seasons along the
lines of airlines, betrayed 6,646 million travellers.
The move to fix passenger
fare depending on the variation in fuel price was a prelude to immense
hardships awaiting train passengers, he said
“The budget had also
failed to grant a couple of MEMUs as promised and a daily train to Guwahati to
meet the needs of about 30 lakh migrant workers,” Mr. Manvettom said.
P. Unnikrishnan, president
(Thiruvananthapuram division), Southern Railway Mazdoor Union said the budget
had failed to gauge the importance of MEMUs, which are crucial to the
connectivity between stations in a State like Kerala where there are stations
every 30 minutes unlike other States where there is considerable distance
between stations.
He said the budget’s
perceived emphasis on safety sounds hollow in the absence of modernization of
signalling system. “For instance, there are more than 100 manually operated
railway gates in the Alappuzha-Kayamkulam stretch, posing threats to human
lives. He said that even minor modernisation works that had taken place in the
south railway station, like the escalator, was not done out of the funds
allocated in the rail budgets. The budget had also failed to bring respite to
the severely stretched Railway Protection Force.
Doubling of tracks in the
Ernakulam-Kayamkulam stretch via Kottayam is another casualty, which had not
allocated any funds for completing the work. So far, the work has been
completed in the Ernakulam-Mulanthuruthy stretch and the
Kayamkulam-Changanassery stretch. The Union Railway Minister had neglected the
State’s demand for a Rs. 400-crore allocation for completing the doubling in
the Mulanthuruthy-Chegannur stretch.
The never ending wait for
the Angamaly-Sabari rail line is likely to continue, as there is no allocation
towards the project in the budget. Only the work on the 7-kilometer stretch
between Angamaly and Kalady had been completed. The demand for an immediate
allocation of Rs. 157 crore towards land acquisition for implementing the
project along the renewed alignment stood rejected.
Mathew Paul, president of
All Kerala Railway Passengers’ Association, said the usual neglect meted out to
the State in the rail budget was the result of the failure of the eight Union
ministers from the State to leverage their influence.
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