Karnataka - Bangalore

Grave injustice to State, says Ananth Kumar

BANGALORE: BJP general secretary H. N. Ananth Kumar termed the Railway Budget presented by Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday as an experiment to gain cheap popularity and maintained that the budget was “disappointing” from the point of view of Karnataka’s railway development.

In a release, the BJP leader said Karnataka’s railway network accounted for only 15.7 km per thousand sq km of area which was much below the national average of 19.27 km. This had resulted in 81 taluks of the State not having railway network at all. Mr. Kumar alleged that the neglect of the Centre towards Karnataka’s development was the reason for such a mismatch.

He alleged that the Centre’s failure to provide priority to the development of Karnataka’s railway development despite the State having four Union Ministers was an indication of the Congress-led UPA Government’s biased attitude.

He said the Centre had allocated only Rs. 249 crore for Karnataka’s railway development in the budget as against the request for Rs. 1,000 crore. He termed this as a “grave injustice” to Karnataka.

He alleged that the progress of several rail projects in Karnataka had been hampered as the Centre had failed to release its share of funds.

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