After president Pratibha Patil, Mamata Banerjee has goofed up. Papers tabled do not support the claims the minister made last week in Lok Sabha while presenting the railway budget.
While Mamata claimed a revised earnings estimate of Rs94,742 crore for 2010-11, her budget document pegs it at Rs94,840.44 crore, a difference of around Rs98 crore. Similarly, she announced 1,000 km of new lines during 2011-12, but documents promise 1,300 km.
“The gross earnings have now been fixed at Rs94,742 crore, which is Rs177 crore higher than the budget,” Mamata said. However, the amount budgeted last year was Rs94,764.95 crore. This lowers the gross revised earnings estimate for 2010-11 by Rs23 crore, does not raise it by Rs177 crore.
Railway ministry officials have a ready explanation: “The difference of Rs98 crore is owing to contingencies on account of traffic earnings.”
Mamata, however, did not find merit in explaining why the contingencies, which lead to such a huge revenue loss, arise and what her ministry is doing to prevent them.
On the addition of new lines also she did not disclose that it is the balance of 300 km from the current year that will be added to the 2011-12 target of 1,000 km.
The president has already been slammed by CPM, which claimed that her joint address to parliament last Monday was a repeat of last year.
While moving a motion of thanks on the president’s address in Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, party leader Sitaram Yechury said as per the government, both 2010 and 2011 were the beginning of the decade. He said the opening lines of Pratibha Patil’s address to a joint session of parliament this year were the same as in 2010. The same sentence, “I welcome you to the first session of the new decade”, was there in last year’s speech.
