Minister of state (MoS) for shipping Mukul Roy, MoS for urban development Saugata Roy and the Trinamool Congress’s chief whip Sudip Bandyopadhyaya are being seen as the contenders for the top job.
Now that Trinamool Congress (TC) chief and railway minister Mamata Banerjee has whizzed past the Left post, reducing it to a ‘nano’ and securing a seat for herself at the Writer’s Building, speculation is rife on who will be the next railway minister.
Minister of state (MoS) for shipping Mukul Roy, MoS for urban development Saugata Roy and the party’s chief whip Sudip Bandyopadhyaya are being seen as the contenders for the top job. However, a Trinamool leader told DNA that it was too early to comment on the issue. Banerjee would hold a meeting with prime minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee next week to discuss the issue, the leader said.
Interestingly, along with the names of the three Trinamool leaders, another theory doing the rounds is that the Congress may retain the Cabinet post as they (the Trinamool leaders) lack the seniority required for the railway portfolio. Grapevine has it that even Banerjee herself would not like the other leaders in the party to rise too high from the ranks.
There is the likelihood of the Trinamool getting the MoS berth in the much-coveted ministry. A party leader, however, dismissed the theory, saying: “These are all suppositions.”
Banrejee’s tenure at the Rail Bhavan has not been too impressive because of her obsessive preoccupation with West Bengal which left the ministry to the babus.
The Railways’ dwindling revenues were explained away by use of bureaucratic jugglery and deceptive statistics, while accidents were attributed to sabotage and human error. In Mamata’s two-year stint as railway minister, 276 persons lost their lives in train accidents.
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