The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has released a list of crashes, deaths, and derailments that occurred during the previous government regimes, amid a growing chorus from opposition parties calling for the resignation of Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in response to the Odisha train tragedy.
As many as 54 collisions occurred while Mamata Banerjee was the railway minister, according to BJP government sources. According to the data, there were 839 derailments and 1451 death during her time as the railway minister.
The government sources also claimed that there were at least 79 collisions while Nitish Kumar was the railway minister and 51 collisions while Lalu Prasad Yadav, another previous railway minister, was in office.
When Mamata Banerjee questioned the administration and claimed that the Balasore train tragedy would have been avoided had the anti-collision system been in operating on this route, the data was made public. In contrast, RJD leader Lalu Yadav criticised the current administration and said that the Centre had ‘destroyed’ the railways. He also argued that a high-level investigation was necessary to determine what caused the tragedy.
In the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Cabinet, Mamata Banerjee was given the Railway Ministry after she joined the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 1999. In May 2009, Banerjee was appointed the UPA-II government’s new railway minister.
Lalu Yadav was appointed Union Minister of Railways in the UPA administration in 2004 while Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of Bihar, held the position under Atal Bihar Vajpayee.
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