Why were grave red flags ignored: Kharge to PM Modi on Odisha rail tragedy

Shubhadeep Choudhury

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New Delhi, June 5

The Opposition Congress party on Monday slammed the BJP government for entrusting the Odisha train accident probe to CBI and said the decision was a “diversionary tactics to derail any attempt to fix accountability” for the accident.

In a letter, addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge recalled that after a derailment incident in Kanpur in 2016, in which 150 people lost their lives, the Railway Minister had asked the NIA to investigate.

“Subsequently, you (Modi) yourself claimed in an election rally that there was a ‘conspiracy’. The nation was assured that strictest punishment would be meted out. However, in 2018, the NIA closed the investigation and refused to file a chargesheet. The nation is still in the dark – who is responsible for 150 avoidable deaths?”, Kharge noted in the letter.

“The statements so far, and the roping in of yet another agency without the required expertise, remind us of 2016. They show that your government has no intent to address the systemic safety malaise, but is instead finding diversionary tactics to derail any attempts to fix accountability,” Kharge, who has served as Railway Minister, wrote.

Copy of the letter was released to the press by the Congress.

 Kharge said, “The Railway Minister claims to have already found a root cause, but yet has requested the CBI to investigate. The CBI is meant to investigate crimes, not railway accidents. The CBI cannot fix accountability for technical, institutional and political failures. In addition, they lack the technical expertise in railway safety, signaling, and maintenance practices.”

The Congress president said the latest train tragedy has exposed the Railway Minister’s “empty safety claims”.

There is serious concern among the common passengers about the deterioration in safety. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the government to ascertain and bring to light the real reasons that caused the Odisha train accident, Kharge wrote

Today, the most crucial step is to give top priority to installation of mandatory safety standards and equipment across railway routes to ensure safety of passengers and avoid recurrence of an accident like the one at Balasore, Kharge wrote.

“Unfortunately, the people in charge – your goodself and Railway Minister Ashwani Vaishnav – do not want to admit that there are problems,” Kharge wrote.

The Congress leader rued that instead of focusing on strengthening the railways at the basic level, only “superficial touch up” was being done “to stay in news”.

Instead of making the railways more effective, more advanced, and more efficient, it is being meted out with step-motherly treatment, Kharge said.