September 20, 2005: Following a Bombay High Court order, the BJP and the Shiv Sena deposited cheques for Rs 20 lakh each at the Maharashtra Chief Secretary’s office as fine to the state Government for damaging public property during a Mumbai bandh called by them on July 30, 2003. Would the agitating Gurjjars have uprooted railway tracks in Bayana if they knew that the local population of the area could be penalised for causing loss to Railways property? Probably not. It is this reasoning that has now prodded the Indian Railways to dig out a one-year old suggestion: to formulate a policy wherein losses incurred on its property are recovered from the population of the particular area where violent incidents took place. The political “sensitivity” of the suggestion, though, is what appears to be holding the Railway ministry back from formally pursuing the idea either at the level of the Centre or a state like Rajasthan.Having suffered losses to the tune of Rs 12.28 crore from last year’s Gurjjar agitation, Railway ministry in an answer to a question in the Rajya Sabha first talked about the idea. Answering to the part of the question, asked by Rajeev Chandrasekhar, on how Railways proposed to make good such losses, Minister of State R Velu had said, “Since rioters are part of a mob which goes berserk and largely consists of anonymous people, there is no way to make good the losses from them. But the Government can formulate a policy for recovery of the cost of losses from the entire population of a particular area where such incidents occur.”However, the suggestion met with a quiet burial with Rail Bhavan failing to do the necessary follow-up. It was only after this year’s Gurjjar agitation, which has already caused significant losses to the Indian Railways, that the matter resurfaced during discussions amongst the ministry’s top brass.“There is no need to make a new law on this. All state governments, under various categories of law, are empowered to penalise errant populations if they indulge in unruly behaviour which ends up causing loss to government property,” a senior Railway ministry official said. “Railways, being the most obvious sign of government property, is often in the line of fire of violent agitations. In addition to losses incurred on account of damage to stations, tracks, trains, bridges and level crossing gates during such agitations, Railways’ major losses come from cancellation of passenger trains and the inability to load and move freight trains,” another official added.
