Ashwini Vaishnaw downplays rail safety concerns, says Congress instilling fear: ‘Those shouting…’.

Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi hit back at Vaishnaw for evading responsibility for the failures, calling him ‘derailment minister’. Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday went on an offensive against the opposition’s concerns regarding the increasing number of rail accidents and the current state of railway services in India. “Those who are shouting here must be asked in their 58 years of being in power why they were not able to install Automatic Train Protection (ATP), even 1 km. Today, they dare to raise the questions,” Vaishnaw said in Lok Sabha. “When Mamata Banerjee was the railway minister, she used to give the accident numbers that decreased from 0.24 to 0.19 these people used to clap in the House and today when it has decreased from 0.19 to 0.03, they put such blame,” the bureaucrat-turned-politician said. The minister accused the Congress party of spreading false information through social media, instilling unnecessary fear among the millions of daily railway passengers. “Will this country run in this way? Congress, with the help of its troll army on social media, raises false things. Are they trying to infuse fear in the hearts of those 2 crore people who travel every day by railway?” he said. Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi hit back at Vaishnaw for evading responsibility for the failures and instead blaming everything on the past. “Today we are seeing a new tradition, that the BJP Ministers do not take the moral responsibility of their failure and instead accuse the history,” Gogoi told reporters after walking off from the House. Pointed to the recent rail accidents, including the deadly Balasore mishap in which around 300 passengers lost their lives, Goigoi called Vaishnaw a “derailment minister”. “In the last two months, around 4 goods trains have been derailed, around 4 persons died. In June when the Kanchenjunga Express crash happened, 10 people died. In last two months, these incidents happened. Despite this, the Railway Minister has not taken the moral responsibility and resigned. In last year, around 300 passengers died in Balasore,” Gogoi said. “He is not railway minister, he is derailment minister. He should resign. But it is the tradition of BJP that they don’t take the moral responsibility, be it Railway Minister or Education Minister. In protest to their response, all INDIA alliance parties leaders walked out,” he added.