By IANS,
New Delhi : Seeking to silence her critics, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee Thursday said that her “political friends” were conspiring against her by indulging in “blame game” over the functioning of her ministry and train services in the country.
After facing a volley of questions in the Lok Sabha on the rising number of train accidents, her long and continuous absence from Delhi and her running the railway ministry from Kolkata, Banerjee admitted she had stayed away from Delhi, but asserted, “But I have done far more”.
“Ask me any question about the railway ministry, I will answer you now without even consulting a single paper,” the Trinamool Congress chief said in Hindi, trying to tell MPs that she was very much on the job even if she was staying put in Kolkata, where assembly polls are due next year.
“My political friends are indulging in blame game. Don’t blame me for railway accidents. It is not a joke to run 17,000 trains a day. We want to reduce the number of accidents,” she said, and even claimed that the number of accidents has, in fact, come down even as the number of casualties has gone up.
This, she said, was due to the May 28 Gyaneshwari Express accident “which was not an accident but a sabotage”. At least 148 people were killed in that train tragedy.
This was Banerjee’s first appearance in parliament since her Aug 9 rally in Lalgarh in West Midnapore district where she made a controversial statement on Maoists by raising questions about guerrilla leader Azad’s killing in a police shootout.
She attended the house for the supplementary demands for grants worth Rs.489 crore for her ministry. The demand was granted by the house through a voice vote after her nearly 30-minute speech in the Lok Sabha.