Centre,state still firing letters over Basumati

But Railway Board chairman S M Khurana subsequently wrote to Chief Secretary Asok Mohan Chakrabarti requesting him to send the balance sheet of the company mentioning its total liabilities.

“We are going to reply to the letter soon,” Chakrabarti said.

Earlier,after Banerjee declared in rail budget that her ministry was ready to take over Basumati,Khurana had written to the chief secretary expressing the railway ministry’s interest in taking over the ailing concern minus its liabilities.

In response,Chakrabarti had said the state government was not ready to part with Basumati if the Railways did not accept its liabilities as well.

Basumati is under the Information and Culture department headed by the chief minister himself. According to sources,he was not keen on handing over the organisation to railways for fear of the Trinamool getting political mileage.

But the employees,who have not started work as yet,are now keen on the organisation being taken over by the railways. “We don’t know what the state government will do. Our salary does not come from the state exchequer. We get it from the reserve funds of the company and we don’t know what will happen when funds go dry,” Timir Mukherjee,secretary of the Basumati Bachao Committee,had said.