Government priorities skewed, say ally & Opposition after Mumbai stampede

Friday’s stampede at the Elphinstone Railway station has led to a lot of finger pointing and blame game between political parties in Maharashtra. The first to fire a salvo at the government was BJP ally, the Shiv Sena, which slammed the government. Sena linked Friday’s incident to the proposed bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad and claimed that the government’s priorities were skewed.

“We have been raising this issue with railway authorities and the ministers but nothing has moved. They don’t want to work at the right time.

Technical excuses are given to explain their lapses. What is the bigger priority for Mumbai a bullet train or local train services,” asked Sena MP Arvind Sawant who has been raising the issue of the Elphinstone and Parel over bridges upgradation.

Congress leader Balasaheb Vikhe Patil echoed that the government’s priorities were not aligned with that of the commuters. “The railways are not providing basic services to commuters, instead they are focusing on renaming the station from Elphinstone to Prabhadevi,” said Vikhe Patil. NCP’s Nawab Malik slammed the BJP for being fixated with the bullet train while ignoring real issues. BJP leaders, meanwhile, asked politicians not to ‘play politics’.