Kerala ‘disappointed’ with railway budget: Minister

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM - Though Kerala got seven new trains, a new drinking water bottling plant and three trains were extended, the Kerala government

said the railway budget presented by Mamata Banerjee Wednesday was a “disappointment”.

M. Vijayakumar, state minister for law and parliamentary affairs, said: “For a person who is new to budget announcements this might look attractive. But if you look into what happened to last year’s budget, Kerala was given a Railway Medical College. Now what happened to that?

“This time it is a new water bottling plant and you wait and see, it will just be on paper when the next budget is announced,” said Vijayakumar.

Last year, there was a weekly non-stop train from Kochi to Delhi and two railway stations Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi were to be turned into world class ones.

“Nothing has happened on this. The Railway Zone that we have been demanding for long is yet to be a reality. Another long standing demand was a daily train to Bangalore. This time also that has not happened and this is because of the strong lobby of the luxury buses which operates every day from the various cities in the state,” said Vijayakumar.

–Indo Asian News Service