In a veiled criticism of his predecessor Dinesh Trivedi,Railway Minister Mukul Roy on Friday said that execution of all big-ticket projects had suffered inordinate slowdown during the past seven-eight months despite Railways having the money earmarked for them. Unlike Trivedi,Roy made it clear that ongoing projects did not suffer from a funds crunch. Now Roy has called a high-level review meeting of all projects next week aiming to expedite them. There was delay in execution of certain rail projects. The pace of the execution was very slow in the last seven-eight months. Funds were not a problem for these projects, Roy said. The matter came to Roys attention last week after holding a review meeting with the top brass of Eastern Railway,South-Eastern Railway and Kolkata Metro Rail officials. Ever since assuming office,Roy has been keen on making sure that ongoing projects are not held up. Asked about the progress in locomotive projects in Bihar and Kanchrapara EMU project in West Bengal,he said work on these would be speeded up. A diesel locomotive factory is to be set up at Marhora while an electric locomotive manufacturing unit is proposed at Madhepura in Bihar. Both the multi-crore projects are to be executed in public private partnership. Roy said work on Kanchrapara EMU project will also be expedited.
