Responding to the allegations of Congress in Parliament, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said that we are not just reel makers, we are working people.
Expressing displeasure over the uproar of the opposition over rail accidents, Ashwini Vaishnav said that those who are shouting here should be asked why they could not install even one kilometer of Automatic Train Protection (ATP) in 58 years while being in power.
While speaking in the Parliament, the Railway Minister got annoyed with the uproar created by the opposition MPs. During this, he angrily asked the opposition MPs to sit down. While creating an uproar, he told the opposition MPs, “Shut up, sit down. Sit down. You say anything.” After this, while addressing the Chair, he said, what kind of a method is this, you say anything in between.
The Railway Minister said, “Today they are daring to raise this question. When Mamata Banerjee was the Railway Minister, these people used to clap in the House when the accident rate decreased from 0.24 to 0.19 and today when it has decreased from 0.19 to 0.03, they are making such allegations.”
Will the country run like this- Ashwini Vaishnav
Ashwini Vaishnav asked the speaker whether the country will run like this? The railway minister alleged that the Congress spreads lies through the troll army of social media. He said, “When an old wall of the station collapsed in Ayodhya, the Samajwadi Party and Congress immediately started raising it with their handles. How will the country run with such lies? Two crore passengers travel daily. Do you want to fill this fear in their minds?”
#WATCH | While speaking in Lok Sabha, Union Minister for Railways, Ashwini Vaishnaw says, “We are not the people who make reels, we do hard work unlike you people who make reels for show off…”
The railway minister says, “The average working and rest times of Loco pilots are… pic.twitter.com/gL2sFgWWZt
— ANI (@ANI) August 1, 2024
Ashwini Vaishnav asked the speaker whether the country will run like this? The railway minister alleged that the Congress spreads lies through the troll army of social media. He said, “When an old wall of the station collapsed in Ayodhya, the Samajwadi Party and Congress immediately started raising it with their handles. How will the country run with such lies? Two crore passengers travel daily. Do you want to fill this fear in their minds?”
Railway Minister told what was done to prevent accidents
The Railway Minister told the Parliament that to prevent accidents, unmanned railway crossings have been made across the country, where every year a school bus or some other accident used to happen. The entire control of the stations is done through electronic interlocking. It was installed in the major countries of the world in the 1980-90s. Work was going on at a slow pace here.
He said that after coming to power in 2014, we resolved to develop ATP in 2015 and the trials of Kavach started in 2016. Despite Covid, its extended trials were conducted in 2020-21, three manufacturers were identified and a project of three thousand kilometers was rolled out in 2023 and today we are in a position where two manufacturers are going to join, we have trained more than eight thousand engineers.
He said, now we have tenders in process for 9000 km and in a few months it will start being installed on five thousand locomotives. We have a rail network of about 70 thousand km. Countries with half the network took almost 20 years to install ATP. I would like to assure you that we will leave no stone unturned in installing Kavach.
There have been 8 rail accidents in the last 15 days
Actually, the opposition demands the resignation of the Railway Minister over the frequent rail accidents. They say that when so many rail accidents are happening, the Railway Minister should resign. Let us tell you that in the last 15 days, there have been eight rail accidents.
#WATCH | While speaking in Lok Sabha, Union Minister for Railways, Ashwini Vaishnaw says, “Those who are shouting here must be asked in their 58 years of being in power why they were not able to install Automatic Train Protection (ATP), even 1 km. Today, they dare to raise the… pic.twitter.com/1f66YxBspV
— ANI (@ANI) August 1, 2024
If we talk about the month of July only, then on 18 July, there was a Chandigarh-Dibrugarh rail accident, in which 4 people died and 31 people were injured. On 19 July, a goods train derailed in Valsad, Gujarat, on 20 July, 12 coaches of a goods train derailed in Amroha, UP. On 21 July, 3 coaches of a goods train derailed in Alwar, Rajasthan.
On the same day, a goods train derailed in Ranaghat, West Bengal. On July 26, a goods train derailed in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, on July 29, coaches of Bihar Sampark Kranti got separated in Samastipur, Bihar and on July 30, a passenger train from Howrah to Mumbai derailed in Chakradharpur, Jharkhand.