Stop ‘Hajipurisation’ of Rlys, Vajpayee urged

NEW DELHI: Terming the bifurcation of Eastern Zone as ‘‘Hajipurisation’’ of Indian Railways, six former Indian Railway Board chiefs have urged the Prime Minister to kill the move as it will have ‘‘the most debilitating effect’’ on the network.
In a strong letter to the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, the retired IRB chiefs — Kripal Singh, M N Bery, M S Gujral, M N Prasad, Y P Anand and Anand Shulka — have said shameless political games have forced them to put facts before the nation.
The idea of seven new zones for the country’s biggest undertaking at a time when giants such as Boeing and MacDonnell, BMW and Rover, are entering into mergers to improve efficiency and cut costs and manpower, makes no economic sense, they argue. ‘‘The decision to create new zones, starting with the dubious Hajipur experiment (by Paswan), is a populist, parochial and political overture. It will be an operational debacle, a financial disaster and an administrative blunder.’’
How can a network which uses 60 per cent of it revenue to pay salaries to 16 lakh employees and spends Rs 102 to earn Rs 100 take the additional burden? How can the railway minister justify his step when the Pay Commission, while granting a huge pay rise, had called for pruning down its manpower by 400,000?
How can Nitish Kumar justify the move when electrification and dieselisation of the system and introduction of higher capacity wagons has reduced the need for more management centres or zones, particularly in this information age? they ask.
Citing the reports of CAG, the Standing Committee of Parliament on Railways, the Railway Convention Committee and the Expert Committee constituted by Nitish Kumar himself, which opposed the move, the former chiefs said more zones would be an unmitigated disaster from the operational viewpoint.
‘‘Since 1948, only three new zones have been created, one for strategic reasons (Northeast Frontier Railway) and the other two for operational reasons, but none on linguistic or political grounds. Even in the mid-80s when the Railway Reforms Committee recommended four new zones to meet a massive growth in freight traffic, the ministry treaded cautiously. Till Hajipur sent one of its illustrious citizens to Rail Bhavan to take over as Hon’ble Minister for Railways, with an expertise of the world’s biggest railway network no better than any of the trillion passengers which the Railways ferry on its network.’’
When the Railway Minister says that Rs 35,000 crore is needed for the on-going projects, why is he taking additional burden?
‘‘The new zones at Hajipur and Allahabad will disrupt the Grand Chord — which links coal and steel belts of the east with the north — by creating multiplicity of management centres or zones,’’they say.