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With Suresh Prabhu in motorman's seat, PM's infra agenda gathers steam

An online grievance redressal platform for passengers on the cards

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On his first day in office, Suresh Prabhu signed MoU with transport department for speedy construction of road over bridges
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The man parachuted by the prime minister's office (PMO) to the motorman's job in the ministry of railways means business. Suresh Prabhu -- the new minister for railways who replaced Sadanand Gowda on Monday – is all set to implement prime minister Narendra Modi's agenda. Immediately after taking over as the new minister, Prabhu held discussions with the railway board on multi-modal logistics projects and supervised the signing of an MoU with the transport department for the speedy construction of road over bridges on the national highways – a move that will kiskstart stalled work of almost Rs 10,000 crore. An online grievance redressal platform for passengers is also on the cards.

Prabhu took over the charge of the ministry of railways at 10.40am in the morning. He held a meeting with the top railway board officials immediately and discussed matters such as multimodal logistics and a website for use of the passengers for lodging complains to be followed up immediately by the ministry. He then left for a meeting at the PMO for discussion on the G20 meeting where he is accompanying the prime minister.

He returned to Rail Bhavan at 4pm to oversee the signing of the MoU with the transport ministry. The MoU envisages online tracking of various proposals under approval will be possible. Authorised representatives of ministry of railways and ministry of road transport & highways can track the status of new proposals under approval, the proposals which have already been approved, the stage of approval of the proposal, delay, if any, and reasons thereof.

Suresh Prabhu said, "Railways cannot be seen as a part of the problem. It has to be seen as a part of the solution. Any initiative that removes the bottlenecks is praiseworthy. The big problem is that we get stuck on small issues, the last mile matters. But a solution can be found out only by innovative ideas and by not pointing fingers at anybody."

Transport minister Nitin who was present at the MoU signing made a candid admission that he had criticised railways in a meeting with PM saying that a file for approval of a road over bridge goes to seventeen tables before any action takes place. "Now however things are better. And now I tell people that railway's functioning should be emulated in all other departments," said Gadkari.

Gadkari added that this MoU will help kickstart projects worth at least Rs 10,000 crore which are stuck because of lack of approval from the railways side. "Earlier it used to take the ministry at least six months to two years to approve one RoB. Now it will take just two months, which will help seamless construction of the mega highway projects," said Gadkari.

Prabhu, however, remained tight-lipped on the funding for the mega projects required by the railways. According to the White Paper on railway, it requires an investment of Rs 1,40,000 annually for ten years for infrastructure facelift. The amount however was derived five years back as the paper was laid in Lok Sabha by then minister Mamata Banerjee in 2009.

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