Paswan's removal hailed in Begusarai

begusarai: barring activists of the lok janshakti party, people in general of begusarai have hailed the decision of prime minister atal bihari vajpayee to remove ram vilas paswan from the ministry of communications. he upgraded his home district, khagaria, as a telecom district at the cost of begusarai, is the common refrain of most of the intellectuals and political activists here."even his native block, alauli, was upgraded into a telecom sub-division and brought on par with begusarai which has also a telecom sub-divisional office,"remarked a retired teacher of local gd college, prof chittaranjan singh. "vajpayeeji has taken a right decision,"kedar singh, a newspaper hawker, said and added, "let the people of khagaria in general and alauli in particular shed tears over paswan's removal from communications ministry; we are still where we were prior to the appointment of paswan as minister. incidentally, residents of begusarai had protested against paswan's move to upgrade khagaria into a telecom district on the plea that begusarai has around 15,000-strong subscriber base which fetches an annual revenue of around rs 9 crore for bharat sanchar nigam limited (bsnl) whereas khagaria has only around 5,000 subscribers, generating a revenue of only rs 3 crore per year. the locals felt humiliated when neighbouring districts, including samastipur, vaishali, munger, khagaria, purnia and saharsa, were upgraded as telecom districts. "though the begusarai district has also a number of villages falling in the riverine areas, the wireless in local loop (will) service was not started here,"commented samata leader cittaranjan singh according to whom, the same will service was introduced in the khagaria district on the plea that there were many riverine areas there. during his tenure as minister for railways, paswan laid the foundation stone for a small factory in begusarai. "but that factory is yet to come up,"he said. also, of the 65 members nominated in the khagaria telecom advisory committee (tac), 64 hailed from the khagaria district, especially the khagaria and alauli blocks. "what measures would these tac members, who were not familiar with the problems of begusarai subscribers, suggest in the tac meetings for improvement of telecom services in begusarai?"asked a local medicine dealer, vinod kumar sharma. lok janshakti party activists and supporters of paswan, however, feel betrayed. "paswan should not have joined the new assignment,"said dass paswan. according o him, "a union minister from bihar, envious of growing popularity of paswan, pressurised the pm to change paswan's portfolio."