India’s Railway Man: A Biography of E. Sreedharan by Rajendra B. Aklekar

Author:Rajendra B. Aklekar [Aklekar, Rajendra B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rupa Publications India
Published: 2017-01-31T20:00:00+00:00

Indian Railways represented by the Chairman of Railway Board, insisted on broad gauge. Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dixit too wanted standard gauge, but the Indian Railways opposed it. Their argument was that Indian Railways was following the uni-gauge policy. The Railways said broad gauge meant more capacity. They wanted to thrust broad gauge on us. I proved it to them that gauge has nothing to do with capacity.

The matter went up to the Cabinet and a meeting of a group of Ministers was held to discuss the issue. Lal Krishna Advani was the Chairman of the Committee and other members included the Minister of Railways, the Minister for Urban Development. At that first meeting, all were convinced that Delhi Metro should be standard gauge. But then Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee was absent at the meeting. So, Advani said it would not be correct to take a final decision in the absence of the Railway Minister against the decision of the railway ministry. So we postponed it to another day, when Mamata Banerjee would be available.

The second meeting too went on well and there were discussions about standard gauge. Then, a bombshell was dropped by the Railway Board Chairman V.K. Agarwal. He said, ‘If you are going to have standard gauge then I must inform the honourable ministers that the Indian Railways would not be able to certify it because we have no experience with standard gauge.’

When Agarwal said this, Urban Development Minister Jagmohan was the first to say if that was the case there was no option and we must go for broad gauge. ‘If we cannot get safety certification from the railways for this, we are left with no choice, because according to the legal provisions in place, Indian Railways is supposed to give safety certification to the Metro Railway,’ he said. Then everybody decided to go for broad gauge. That is how the broad gauge issue was decided. This was against the earlier decision. It was a key decision as the work went on. We had floated tenders with two options, one with standard gauge and the other with broad gauge and the companies had to give their quotations in both. This foresight helped us to save time.

After the meeting was over Mamata Banerjee came to me and asked why had I agreed to this? Why had I given in? She also wanted standard gauge. I said I had no option as the Railways said they would not certify the line. The line had to be built fast and we could not afford to delay the project—that was the most important thing. I told her, ‘You can have your broad gauge, but Sreedharan will not be available for finishing the project.’ She did not say anything much and did not seem too bothered, as the Delhi Metro was not directly under her purview.

Earlier, I had lots of discussions with the Indian Railways team and Agarwal himself. But it became a prestige issue for Indian Railways and they were not ready to listen.

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