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Rail Budget 2012: Railway Ministry Ignores PMO's Repeated Pleas to Speed Up Key PPP Projects

  • Prime Minister Manmohan Singh isn't new to snubbing, either from outside or within his government. But the railway ministry's cold response - which borders on utter contempt - to his repeated pleas to speed up the two long-delayed, marquee, projects meant to modernise Indian railways is shocking as hell.That his writ doesn't run much in Congress circles and among senior Cabinet colleagues isn't a secret, but numerous requests from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) asking the railway ministry to invite or rework financial bids on the two ambitious projects - setting up an electric-engine factory in Madhepura and a diesel-engine factory in Marhowra, both in Bihar - hasn't generated any kind of response.

  • Documents reviewed by ET reveal the PMO has written more than a dozen reminders to railway authorities in the past one year.It is an irony that despite huge promises from successive railway ministers to push ahead with public-private partnership projects (PPP) such as these, reminders and requests from the PMO continue to be ignored. Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee was the railway minister since the UPA was re-elected in 2009 until she stepped down from the post to become the chief minister of West Bengal in May last year. The current railway minister is her party colleague Dinesh Trivedi.

  • According to reports, Indian Railways was "working" on renewed financial bids for the delayed PPP projects, but it has so far made no headway. As of now, the railways has indefinitely postponed the financial bid date for the two projects announced in 2006 by the then railways minister Lalu Prasad. The bid date for the new tender process for the projects - after tweaking certain clauses - has been postponed repeatedly since December 2010. Each of these PPP factories are meant to be joint venture entities in which the railways have a 26% equity.

  • A PMO letter dated February 8, 2012, said, "(The) ministry was requested to expedite finalisation of the bid documents. The office may kindly be apprised of the progress made in the matter." So far, there has been no reply to that mail, says a government official who asked not to be named.

  • Just a month earlier, on January 6, the PMO had written a letter to the chairman, railway board, saying: "The undersigned has been directed to request the ministry of railways to expedite the finalisation of the bid documents (related to the Madhepura factory)."

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