Oppn charge: Jugglery to hide financial mess

The party highlighted her litany of unfulfilled promises and accused the Railway Minister of taking the behemoth on a ruinous path. It called the budget a fraudulent exercise,saying she played with figures to conceal the much higher actual operating ratio.

The CPM,which cannot criticise her for her Bengal bias as the rest of the opposition did,said Mamata has virtually achieved the impossible task of allowing the Railways to become bankrupt.

There was no increase in freight earnings this year despite the GDP growing at over 8 per cent and lot of freight traffic is moving towards other modes of transport,senior CPM leader Sitaram Yechury said. He added that the Railway Minister juggled with figures to project an operating ratio of 92 per cent which had touched 115 per cent in the first nine months. It is a sleight of hand and simply perfidious. It was achieved by not paying Rs 1,700 crore to the government as dividend, he said.

The Railway Budget once again shows that the Prime Minister has succumbed to the compulsions of coalition politics. He has allowed the Railway Minister to indulge in an exercise of deceit, the CPM said.

The BJP,while accusing her of indulging in a jugglery of accounts to project profit,called the budget status quoist devoid of any vision,just like the UPA government.

It claimed that the Railways finances and performance are in a mess. The Railways had a cash surplus of Rs 25,000 crore in 2007-08,which is just Rs 1,328 crore now and it is depending on extensive borrowing. The turnaround story of the Indian Railways is over, the party said.

Claiming that many of the projects and trains announced by Mamata in her earlier two budgets have not seen the light of the day,the BJP demanded that a performance budget be presented so that performance vs promise can be ascertained.

Pointing to a jugglery of accounts,the BJP said in the Explanatory Memorandum on the Railway Budget,the amount of appropriation to the depreciation reserves fund has been consciously reduced from Rs 7,600 crore to Rs 5,700 crore without any basis. The rolling stocks which are getting older and need faster replacement to meet its growing business requirement ordinarily require higher depreciation, it said.

This is West Bengal poll manifesto
Mamata Banerjees rail budget is like an election manifesto. The entire focus is on West Bengal,and the rest of India has been totally neglected.

Ananth KumarBJP general secretary

It seems to be more ambitious than reality. Nobody is happy with the budget. She has not announced any provisions for ongoing projects.

D RajaCPI national secretary

The most significant aspect of the budget is that she Mamata Banerjee has not increased any fare. She has shown her great concern and sensitivity towards the needs for the common man to which the UPA government is totally committed.

Manish TewariCong spokesperson

Mamata Banerjee has predictably presented the budget keeping elections in her home state in mind. She has announced major projects for Nandigram and Singur where she had launched a successful political battle some years ago. The overwhelming impression that a national resource has been hijacked by the minister to serve her local political ends cannot be dispelled or denied.

J JayalalithaaAIADMK chief

It looked muddled and is disappointing8230; Only two new trains match our demand list. I also cannot understand the logic behind starting a Duranto train between Howrah and Patna when we had asked it for Patna and New Delhi8230; Where is purported railway profit of Rs I lakh crore?

Nitish KumarBihar Chief Minister

Mamatas outbursts, couplets add spice
It may have been serious business that Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee was conducting but her trademark oratory skills,punctuated by couplets and angry outbursts,provided enough spice to the presentation of the rail budget. This is how she joked,broke into poetry and even lost her cool during her 90-minute speech:

Dhyan se suno,sab hai isme8230; Listen carefully,everything is there in the budget.

I cannot satisfy everybody.

This is not a press conference.

Hum aah bhi bharte hai to ho jaate hai badnaam,woh katl bhi karte hai to charcha nahi hoti Even a sigh from me invites a bad name while even if they commit a murder it is not discussed.

Quoted lines of Aye mere watan ke logon from film Haqeeqat sung by Lata Mangeshkar.

Rail roko kabhi nahi kiya Have never done a stop train agitation. That is our track record.

Quoted Tagore: Give me strength never to disown the poor or bend my knees before insolent might.

Her parting shot: Agar jiyen to kamyabi milegi If we live,we will succeed.

On the platter
9 New Duronto trains Allahabad-Mumbai AC bi-weekly,Pune-Ahmedabad AC tri-weekly,Sealdah-Puri non-AC tri-weekly,Secunderabad-Visakhapatnam AC tri-weekly,Madurai-Chennai AC bi-weekly,Chennai-Thiruvananthapuram AC bi-weekly,Mumbai Central-New Delhi AC bi-weekly,Nizamuddin-Ajmer non-AC bi-weekly and Shalimar-Patna tri-weekly
3 New Shatabdi Express trains: Pune-Secunderabad,Jaipur-Agra and Ludhiana-Delhi
2 Routes to have AC double-decker services: Jaipur-Delhi and Ahmedabad-Mumbai
4 Vivek Express trains to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda in 2013 First four such trains will be on routes of Dibrugarh-Thiruvananthapuram-Kanyakumari Express weekly via Kokrajhar; Dwarka-Tuticorin Express weekly via Wadi; Howrah-Mangalore Express weekly via Palghat; and Bandra T-Jammu Tawi Express weekly via Marwar-Degana-Ratangarh-Jakhal-Ludhiana
4 Kavi Guru Express trains to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. Will be on the routes of Howrah-Azimganj Express daily via Sagardighi; Guwahati-Jaipur Express weekly via Kasganj-Faizabad-Gorakhpur-Kokrajhar; Howrah-Bolpur Express daily; and Howrah-Porbandar Express weekly
4 Janam Bhoomi Gaurav trains to promote rail tourism Will ply on the routes of Howrah-Bolpur-Rajgir Nalanda-Pataliputra Patna-Varanasi Sarnath-Gaya-Howrah; Bangalore-Mysore-Hassan Space Facility,Belur,Halebid,Shravanbengola-Hubli-GadagHampi-Bijapur Gole Gumbaz-Bangalore; Chennai-Puducheri-Tiruchichirappali-Madurai-Kanyakumari -Thiruvananthapuram-Ernakulam-Chennai; and Mumbai-Ahmedabad-Lothal-Bhavnagar Palitana-Alang- Gir-Diu Somnath-Veraval-Junagarh-Rajkot-Mumbai