After names of roads and places, it’s now names of trains that are hitting controversy. When Railway Minister Nitish Kumar flagged off the Kaifiyat Express on Wednesday, he claimed, an exception was being made by naming the train to honour renowned poet Kaifi Azmi.Kaifiyat will run between Kaifi Azmi’s home town Azamgarh and Delhi. Sources said that with elections approaching, naming the train after Azmi was a way to appease the Muslims. ECR’s good show has silenced critics: Nitish HAJIPUR: Hitting out at his critics, including Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee who had opposed the creation of Hajipur-based East Central Railway (ECR) zone, Railway Minister Nitish Kumar has said the remarkable performance of the ECR has silenced its detractors. The East Central Railway was embroiled in a controversy with Banerjee saying the creation of the new zone would render the Railways unprofitable. (PTI) Incidentally, there is a Ministry of Home Affairs notification stating that trains etc — being symbols of national unity — should not be named after individuals.‘‘In this particular case (of Kaifiyat), the Railways may have a fig leaf of justification since they can claim that it is not named after the individual but is also a word. However, there are cases where explaining is going to be difficult for them,’’ an official said.First, Kaifiyat is not ‘‘an exception’’ like the minister claimed, since there are other trains named after individuals. ‘‘Then Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee started the Gurudev Express between Howrah and Nagercoil amid much protestations. She tried to justify saying that Gurudev was not only used for Rabindranath Tagore but also for Kerala social reformer Sri Narayanan Guru. Anyway, since she was the Railway Minister she got away with it,’’ the official added.Before that, attempts had been made to name a train between Secunderabad and Sri Satya Sai Prashanti Nilayam as Satya Sai Express. ‘‘It couldn’t happen since the protests got too loud. There are quite a few Satya Sai Baba devotees in the Railways but they couldn’t pull it off,’’ sources said, adding that personal beliefs of Railway officials played a significant role in such matters.However, the Railways certainly succeeded in naming a train between Trivandrum and Palaghat as Amrita Express in honour of Ma Amritanandmayi. ‘‘It was done when O. Rajagopal was Minister of State for Railways,’’ an official said.Not only that, the railways offered 50 per cent discount on Amrita Express, to the devotees of Ma Amritanandmayi who had gone to seek her blessings on her 50th birthday — Anritavarsham celebrations — on September 24.‘‘This is unprecedented. Protests are already growing louder in Kerala, where a section of the Christian community is demanding that this concession be extended to those who come to attend the annual Maramon Convention held on the banks of river Pamba near Kottayam. Lakhs of people come for it. The situation has become tricky for the railways,’’ he added.
