By Tirthankar Mitra
KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress, BJP and CPI(M) have always been at odds. Of late, post the inauguration of three Metro railway routes in and around Kolkata, last week by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, things have come to a head between the three political outfits as they claim credit for it.
With the state Assembly elections scheduled to be held next year, TMC, BJP and CPI(M) are scurrying to claim credit. Yet the fact remains these projects which Prime Minister Modi inaugurated were the brain children of Union Railway minister, Mamata Banerjee before she stepped down as Union Railway Minister from the Union Cabinet on 19 May, 2011.
Ever since she assumed office as West Bengal chief minister the next day, Banerjee had her hands off these projects. During her tenure as Union railway minister, many projects were completed and funds sanctioned for others. Her credit is not reduced by a notch after Prime Minister Modi inaugurated some of them. Arguably a railway minister should have inaugurated these projects in the fitness of things
But who holds the railway ministry portfolio in PM Modi’s Cabinet is a query which can make its way into a quiz contest. Small wonder, the Prime Minister has the distinction of inaugurating almost all the new railway projects.
Be that as it may, a cursory look at the five Railway budgets between 1999-2001 and 2009-2011 she had placed in the Lok Sabha will weigh the scales in her favour in this war of words. The long delay in the completion of the projects sanctioned by her during her tenure as Railway minister speaks for the non-performance of the NDA regime at the Centre.
Started much later after the Kolkata Metro, the Delhi Metro has been completed. The work of other metropolitan metro projects has been finished too. As for the East-West Metro, it was given to the railway ministry by the then Left Front government. Banerjee instructed the ministry officials to make Esplanade station to be junction of all Metro routes and allotted funds for it. Accordingly, green, blue, purple, red and orange routes of Metro will converge into Esplanade. Thus, the Trinamool chief can take credit for the Metro route beyond Dum Dum and Tollygunge.
Skipping the recent inauguration ceremony Banerjee has posted in the social media about being “nostalgic”. She has good reason to nurse this feeling. Recalling her role in sanctioning these Metro projects, she has written “,Allow me to be a little nostalgic today……I had drawn the blue prints, arranged the funds, initiated the works and endured that different ends of the city …..were connected by the intra-Metro grid ….Later as the CM of West Bengal, I had the additional privilege of taking part in the execution of projects. I arranged free land, paved roads, rehabilitation of displaced people and removed hurdles. Expanding the Metro infrastructure had been a long journey for me.”
The state chief minister’s speech has miffed the BJP. Former state unit chief Rahul Sinha said that the TMC is trying to deceive the people’s political sense and public memory. In its X handle the BJP has posted a sketch of a Metro train passing through a “TMC barrier”. Sinha has also called upon the chief minister not to think of people to be ignorant.
Not to be outdone, the CPI(M) in a post in its West Bengal unit page stated “Kolkata’s East-West Metro Corridor-the fruit of Left Front government’s visionary planning”. It also posted a photograph of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Pranab Mukherjee at the foundation stone laying ceremony.
Banerjee had skipped the inauguration ceremony. The three principal political outfits of West Bengal have had their say. Neither the Left nor the BJP has given a detailed account of their financial assistance and administrative collaboration in the project. It needs no rocket scientist to decipher their contribution in this project. Their contribution ranges from little to none. Had it been otherwise, they would certainly have put it on record.
Their outpourings are aimed at the coming Assembly elections. The chief minister, on the other hand has put her case fair and square and underscored it with her detailed contributions of a government she heads. Mamata Banerjee has not inaugurated the Metro projects. But she has put the record straight leaving no doubt about the contribution of her dispensation for its completion. (IPA Service)
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