New Delhi, March 15 (FN Agency) The Opposition MPs on Tuesday questioned the Union Government, whether it was planning to privatise the Railway, and opposed the plan as the Lok Sabha took up a debate on demands for grants for the Railway Ministry. Initiating the debate on demands for grants, Congress MP K Suresh said the government was projecting the Annual Plan of Railways at Rs 2,45,800 crore for the year 2022-23 as the maximum amount ever proposed for Railways by the Government. “The Indian Railways are financed primarily through three sources – budgetary support from the government, internal resources like passenger and freight earnings from Railway lands, other sundry heads and RRB earnings and extra Budgetary Resources. “So, going by the break-up of these three components, we can see that the gross budgetary support for 2022-23 is Rs. 130,300 crore only.
It means that the Union Government will provide only Rs 1,30,300 crore or 55.85 per cent of the total capital expenditure. From where will the rest of the money for Railways to meet its expenses and modernisation come?,” he questioned. “This amount will come from extra budgetary resources, which include market borrowings, PPP, institutional financing and Foreign Direct Investment. There lies the fact that the Indian Railways, the premier public sector employer and organisation, is up for sale,” he said. “In simple English, it means that the Railways will go into the hands of the individuals in another name and in another term. Both the Railway Ministers can be seen trying to carry out the blanket sale-out of railways and make the people fool by saying that we are not selling the Railways but we are just changing the hands of ownership,” he said. BJP MP Raghavendra Singh Rathod slammed the Congress MP and said he was having “hallucinations”. DMK leader K Kanimozhi gave the example of Airport line of Delhi metro which was made under Public Private Partnership. “Today we are talking about privatization of Railways. They assume that everybody has accepted it and is happy with privatization. We have seen an example of privatisation and what happened to the Delhi Metro-IGI Airport project.