Jairam Ramesh pitches doing away with separate Railway budget to Rajya Sabha

A strong pitch was made in Rajya Sabha today for doing away with the Rail Budget with a few members feeling that it was a colonial era practice not relevant anymore.

"...The Railway budget is a colonial idea whose time is over. Today, Railway expenditure accounts for only 6% of the general expenditure of the government... Why should we have a separate budget for the Railways?," said Jairam Ramesh (Cong), who was a minister in UPA government.

He was participating in a discussion on the Railway Budget in Rajya Sabha.

Ramesh suggested that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Railway Minister Sadananda Gowda give a "serious thought" to the idea of abolishing the separate budget for the Railways.

The demand received support from Rangasayee Ramakrishna (BJP), who hoped that the Modi government will do away with this practice in the next two to three years.

"We should do away with this practice of the colonial era... we should go for corporatisation of the railways for performing different tasks such as looking after maintainance of railway stations," he said.

Earlier, Ramesh held the separate budget as "the root cause" of the financial disaster in the Railways and said that as long as the practice remains, the turnaround of the Railways was not possible.

During British era in 1925, the tradition of presenting a separate budget for the Railways started perhaps because it was the largest industrial asset of the country then.

Stating that the Railways spend around 28,000 crore on social obligations in a year, Ramesh suggested that the fund should come from the general budget.