Rail Budget: Dinesh Trivedi may end up as first rail minister to go after presenting budget

NEW DELHI: This is the first time in Indian parliamentary history that the railway minister’s own party has planned to go to any length to force a rollback in hike of passenger fares, barely moments after he announced it while presenting the annual railway budget. This is also the first time that the railway minister may have to quit his office soon after presenting his budget.
It did not take more than 10 minutes for Trinamool Congress boss and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who was in Nandigram, to react sharply to railway minister Dinesh Trivedi’s decision on Wednesday afternoon.
What she communicated to him through Trinamool parliamentary party leader Sudip Bandopadhyay was a short, clear message, “Roll back the fare hike or resign.”
Trinamool plans to force the issue and is ready to use any device. “We will use whatever is permissible under parliamentary procedures,” Trinamool MP Derek O’Brien, who had tweeted to call the hike “unacceptable”, said.
The railway minister may have chosen to resign or be sacked, for he refused to withdraw the hike and announced it at a press conference that followed soon after Banerjee’s communication to him. “I am firm on my decision,” Trivedi said when asked about the rollback order from his party chief. He was summoned to Kolkata by Banerjee on Wednesday evening. The party is likely to replace Trivedi but rollback of the hike, after the budget has been placed in Lok Sabha, will have to be worked out between Banerjee and the government now.
Banerjee accused Trivedi of raising fares without consulting her. “The hike was not discussed with the party… it is a burden on the poor… we (TMC) do not support it… the party wants the hike to be withdrawn,” Bandopadhyay told reporters after being briefed by Banerjee.
Interestingly, hinting that finance minister Pranab Mukherjee was in league with Trivedi on the railway budget, Bandopadhyay said, “This railway budget may be appreciated by the Union finance ministry, but the Union finance ministry has not played the role of strengthening the financial health of Bengal.” Bandopadhyay was also alienating Trivedi from Bengal, by saying this.
Before he started work on the rail budget, Trivedi met Banerjee a couple of months ago in Kolkata. He discussed the hikes and the three ways in which he wanted to do it. He shared with her his idea of hiking upper class fares, about rounding off ticket prices and decontrolling fares in tandem with the rise and fall of diesel prices. Banerjee rejected all the ideas and was firm that there should be no raise in passenger fares. Back at Rail Bhawan, Trivedi was in a fix over whether to follow the party diktat or do what was required as the railway minister. He decided to act as a railway minister more than a party man. Trivedi perhaps knew right then that he would have to pay for this by resigning from his post.
On Wednesday, even while Trivedi was hosting lunch for railway officials in his Parliament House chamber, Trinamool MPs trooped in looking very grim. Soon, Bandopadhyay came out of the room and was seen speaking to Banerjee on the mobile phone. He was being briefed to tell the media about the party leadership’s reaction. Once the call was over, Bandopadhyay looked even more serious.
Just as Trivedi left for his press conference, Bandopadhyay headed out to another media corner. While Bandopadhyay was announcing that “TMC does not support the passenger fare hike announced by the railway minister and that he had not consulted the party and the party now demands that he withdraw the decision to hike fares”, Trivedi was replying to questions about the rollback saying, “I stand firm on my decision.”
Addressing a public meeting in Nandigram, Banerjee said, “You all know that there has been an increase in railway fare. We were not aware of this. Our parliamentary party has taken it up. We will not accept this, we won’t let it happen.”
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