Eastern Railway Budget

Politics seemed to prevail over sound economics as the railway minister, Ms Mamata Banerjee, took to the stage once again on Wednesday to present her second Railway Budget in the last seven months.

The goodies doled out to the Trinamul Congress leader’s home state came as no surprise given Ms Banerjee’s determination to dislodge the Marxists from power in next year’s Assembly election in West Bengal.

With no increase in passenger fares for the seventh year running and no revision in freight rates either this year, the railways will need to raise resources from other avenues. Apart from looking for private sector investment, the railways will also look for additional market borrowings of Rs 350 crore, it was indicated in the Railway Budget.

Railway finances should be a cause for concern given that its profits have fallen by 93 per cent in 2009-10 as compared to 2007-08. It is noteworthy, though, that the Railways hope that earnings from passenger traffic will increase by 10 per cent in the next fiscal year.

On Monday, there was a sense of deja vu given that the July 2009 budget too was West Bengal-centric. With Assembly polls a little more than a year away in that state, any hike in passenger fares or freight rates would be a politically unwise move for Ms Banerjee. The minister told the LS that she did not “propose any increase in the passenger fares of any class”.

Rail Budget 2010

* No increase in passenger fares and freight rate
* E-ticket service charge lowered to Rs 10 for sleeper class, Rs 20 for AC class
* Freight rate for foodgrains, kerosene down Rs 100/wagon
* 54 new trains, 10 Duronto trains
* Tourist train Bharat Tirth on 16 routes
* 101 new suburban services for Mumbai
* SMS updates for reservation status, train timing, wagon movement
* Free travel for cancer patients in 3rd AC and Sleepers

What AP got

* A wagon manufacturing factory to be established at Secunderabad.

* An assurance on Railway Sports Academy to be set up at Secunderabad.

* Rs 700 crore for pending projects, the highest in last one decade. Earlier, the South Central Railway get only Rs 200 crore every year for on-going projects.

* 21 new trains though some of them do not originate but pass through AP.

* Matribhoomi Ladies Special to be operated between Falaknuma and Lingampalli.

* Survey for 12 new railway lines ordered. Proposals submitted for Planning Commission’s
approval.

* Feasibility study for new railway lines between Falaknuma-Umdanagar and Secunderabad-Medchal.

* Preliminary engineering-cum-traffic survey to be taken up for dedicated freight corridor. This will help industrial and business houses of the state as AP is included in three corridors including North-South, East-South and South-South.

* Six stations - Guduru, Narsaraopet, Lingampalli, Shankarpalli, Tandur and Vikarabad - to be developed as Adarsh Stations.

* Multi-functional complexes to be set up at Dhar-
mavaram, Karimnagar, Kurnool, Nellore, Nizam-
abad, Vijayawada and Zaheerabad.

* Special tourist trains called Bharat Tirth to benefit pilgrims of the state.

US citizen detained in North Korea seeks asylum

A US citizen detained in North Korea has reportedly requested asylum because he wants to serve in the North Korean army and not a “capitalist militia,” South Korea’s Dong-a Ilbo newspaper reported on Saturday.

Few details were released about the 28-year-old man, including his identity. He allegedly entered the Stalinist nation through China.

The US is working though the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang to gain access to the detainee, according to a government spokesman in Washington.

The Swedes represent US interests in the country because the US and North Korea do not have formal diplomatic relations.

The man was arrested on January 25, becoming the second known US citizen in North Korean custody.

Another, Robert Park, was detained by North Korea in December while wandering across the border from China on a religious mission.

Washington has also sought access to him.

In March, two US journalists were arrested after allegedly entering North Korea illegally and sentenced to 12 years of hard labour. They were released and flown back to the United States months later, after a meeting in Pyongyang between former US president Bill Clinton and North Korea leader Kim Jong Il.

Lalu plans to launch a bigger movement than JP’s

Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo Lalu Prasad on Saturday proclaimed that the RJD-Lok Janshakti Party “Bihar bandh” scheduled for January 28 would be bigger in scale than the Socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan’s “Total Revolution” clarion call during the 1975 Emergency.

Branding his bandh as a war against the Nitish Kumar government’s policies and the soaring prices of essential commodities, Mr. Prasad said the movement would go on until the prices come down to what they were six months ago.

Speaking to media persons after filing his nomination papers for the post of RJD president, Mr. Prasad said the RJD would launch the movement in phases and also stage a “jail bharo andolan”.

Mr. Prasad said Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar alone could not be held responsible for the skyrocketing prices of essential commodities and that the Centre collectively was to blame for this.

Stating that measures taken by Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi to control hoarding and black marketing across the State had proved “utterly ineffectual”, the RJD leader alleged that there had been “at least 500 hunger deaths in the State and that more people were dying due to the prevailing cold wave conditions as the Administration was not providing the poor with vital items like woollens”.

Mr. Prasad charged that “more and more liquor shops were being opened in villages and that education had stagnated throughout the State”.

“Education is in a sorry state in Bihar. The quality of primary and secondary education has gone to the dogs. Not a single medical college has been opened during his [Nitish’s] tenure,” said Mr. Prasad, adding, “There is widespread corruption in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme due to which people have not been getting any work.”

Criticising the NDA government’s policies, Mr. Prasad said not a single sugar mill had been opened in the State till date and there had been no new investments

Eamcet to be scheduled on Sunday to avoid traffic jam

The Eamcet will be held for the first time on a Sunday. The decision was taken when students who were not allowed to take the test in previous years as they arrived late to the exam centres due to traffic snarls approached the AP State Human Rights Commission (APSHRC).

World Bank gives state Rs 3,720 cr

The state government inked a pact with the World Bank (WB) for a loan of Rs 3,720 crore to improve roads, water and sanitation facilities in addition to other urban services.

The state and WB officials signed the agreements in the presence of the Chief Minister, Mr K. Rosaiah, and the bank country director, Mr Roberto N. Zagha.

The catch in the loan, however, is that except for the portion of the loan given for roads, the WB funds can be claimed as reimbursement only. The state will have to spend on various projects by itself and then claim reimbursement from the WB.

The government will also adopt the “user-has-to-pay” policy for the water supply and sanitation projects in which the community contribution is fixed at Rs 21 crore. This will be 20 per cent of the government’s contribution of Rs 123 crore. The total project cost is Rs 864 crore.

The state aims to benefit 20 lakh people by improving rural water supply and sanitation in 16 districts.

4 AP officers get top honour

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) officer, Mr S. Ravindranath, who probed the Satyam fraud case and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) officer, Mr G. Raja Sekhar Reddy, who unearthed narcotics and hawala rackets were awarded the Presidential award for distinguished record of service.

They will be given the award on Republic Day.

Mr Ravindranath played a key role in the attachment of properties of the Satyam scam accused including Mr B. Ramalinga Raju.

For the past year, Mr Ravindranath has been working for the ED after he was shifted from the DRI.

Mr G. Raja Sekhar Reddy, had helped to uncover major drug cases in 2002 and 2004 and aided illegal gold seizures while working at the DRI.

As the intelligence officer of the DRI, he helped reveal a Rs 100-crore hawala racket and he also cracked

a commercial imports fraud from China.

The latter led to the recovery of Rs 4 crore for the government.

In addition, Mr Reddy also exposed several fake drug cases.

Other officials who were given the President award include Mr M.V.S. Prasada, the superintendent of Central Excise at Guntur, and Mr K. Jagan Mohan, the superintendent of Central Excise at Visakhapatnam.

Crash report indicts AP aviation

The Central Bureau of Investigation will probe the alleged negligence of maintenance personnel who checked the Bell 430 helicopter which carried the former chief minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, to his death last September.

CBI officials said that this was being done in the wake of the Director General of Civil Aviation probe into the crash confirming the “casual attitude” of the maintenance personnel.

Sleuths will be questioning maintenance engineers and as well as the officials of AP Aviation Corporation Limited.

The CBI DIG, Mr V.V. Lakshminarayan, informed that the agency had already sent its team to New Delhi to collect the cockpit voice recorder data from the DGCA.

The DGCA report also blamed AP Aviation Corporation Limited alleging that it did not perform the quality assurance as per the laid down practices and directives.

“The helicopter was probably not airworthy when it was released for flight on September 2, 2009, even though it was not a contributory factor to the accident,” said the probe report.

Further, CBI sleuths will also examine how the transmission oil pressure was lost, though no snag was detected during inspection.

The DGCA probe also found that the logbook did not mention the reasons for the removal and repair of an engine from the No. 2 position and its installation on the number 1 position. The committee noted that one of the engines of the copter had become inoperative briefly during an earlier flight.

The aircraft maintenance engineer and flight crew also ignored the advisory on excess of torque before operation of the flight on September 2, 2009, the report stated.

35% pay hike for state staff

The Chief Minister, Mr K. Rosaiah, on Tuesday offered a pay hike of 35 per cent to employees against 27 per cent recommended by the Pay Revision Commission (PRC). Though a committee constituted for the purpose was supposed to discuss the PRC recommendation on January 18, Mr Rosaiah called upon the employees and announced it as a Sankranti gift.