Rly ministry used as bargaining tool: PM

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said his government is focused on development of railways shedding earlier practices wherein the ministry was used as a “bargaining tool” by the main ruling party to “distribute trophies to its allies”.

“The railway was left to its fate in earlier regimes. The allies of main political party used to demand the railway ministry to join the government. The party which came to power at Centre also used the railway ministry as a bargaining tool to distribute trophies to its allies. This is a bitter truth,” he said. “Leaders from political parties who got the control of the railways were not interested in (development of) railways and I need not say what they were interested in,” Modi said.

The Prime Minister on Monday laid the foundation stone for redevelopment of Gandhinagar railway station, which will get a face-lift at a cost of Rs 250 crore and will have a 300-room five star hotel built atop. “My government has given priority to railways... it should expand, it should be developed, get modernised and it should bring a qualitative change in the lives of common people. We have tried to do this in the last two years and five months. We have increased the budget of railways to double of what it was,” he said.

Modi listed various works done by his government to develop railways and said the pace of doubling of railway tracks has increased, besides speeding up of gauge conversion and electrification of lines.