New Delhi, July 20 (IANS) Hitting out at Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee over a spate of train accidents, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Tuesday also targeted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi for their failure to take corrective steps.
BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy said that the railway minister was busy with politics in West Bengal while train travellers were suffering “due to the utter neglect of the railways”.

“The BJP is shocked at the increasing operational inefficiency of Indian Railways under the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government,” he said.

“Gruesome accidents with a heavy toll of innocent human lives have become a regular feature of Indian Railways. Since May 2009, there have been numerous major accidents with loss of 428 lives,” he said.

The BJP leader alleged that safety and security issues had been relegated to the background by the railways and thousands of posts in security wings were lying vacant.

Rudy maintained that the tragic accidents had not stirred “the conscience of either the railway minister or that of the prime minister or the UPA chairperson”.

He said UPA ministers were behaving “as independent satraps” and “the prime minister appears to be completely incapacitated at reigning in the rampant lack of discipline and total mismanagement of crucial sectors of economy and national life by these ministers”.

“Whether it is the agriculture ministry headed by Sharad Pawar, the environment and forests ministry headed by Jairam Ramesh, the telecom ministry headed by A. Raja, the railway ministry headed by Mamta Banerjee and many others…they are behaving independent of the prime minister and the UPA chairperson,” he said.

The two top UPA leaders had “maintained a deafening silence on this apathy and callousness towards the country and the people”, he said.