Minister ignores PM direction

Minister ignores PM’s directive to visit site
Girja Shankar Kaura
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 11
After the former Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee, it is now the turn of her party colleague Mukul Roy to show tantrums and ignore Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s directives.

After committing a faux pas yesterday by saying that he would visit the Kalka Mail accident site in Uttar Pradesh “only if the need be”, the junior minister in the railways from the Trinamool Congress has chosen to ignore PM’s directive for him to visit the accident site in Assam.

At least 50 persons were injured when the separatists bombed the Guwahati-Puri Express when it was nearing Ghograpara in western Assam, about 70 km from Assam’s main city of Guwahati. The incident took place yesterday.

This morning Singh had directed Roy to visit the site where the Guwahati-Puri Express derailed in Assam, but the Minister of State for Railways has remained non-committal on the need to go.

Asked specifically by a news agency whether he would go to Assam since the directive was given by the Prime Minister, Roy said, “I have nothing to say. I suggest you contact the General Manager of the NF Railway about this.”

While Singh yesterday mourned the death of passengers in Kalka Mail derailment, Roy showed his insensitivity by suggesting that there was no need for a minister to visit the site of the accident in Uttar Pradesh.

Incidentally, the train accident in Assam was the fourth in the country within the last one month. The Kalka Mail accident was the third in Uttar Pradesh and the second within the past four days in the state.

While earlier on June 19, a brake lever snapped from a freight train at Aligarh and the wheel ploughed into passengers waiting at the platform, killing four people and injuring at least seven, over 30 persons were killed when a train rammed into a bus packed with a marriage party at an unmanned railway crossing in Kanshiram Nagar on July 7. The incident at Aligarh occurred when brake wheel of a passing goods train snapped from one of the wagons and hit the passengers waiting at Platform No

II of the railway station. Railways have also ordered an inquiry into all the accidents. Meanwhile, 15 trains were cancelled and 10 were diverted today, a day after the Kalka Mail accident. Railway authorities were trying to restore the track where traffic was completely disrupted.