Your attention please! Lalu doesn’t own Indian Railways
Railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s brothers-in-law have often embarrassed him by courting controversies. On Tuesday, his parents-in-law decided to chip in. They were caught travelling ticketless in the Sampark Kranti Express.
By Ashok K Mishra, TNN |
PATNA: Railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s brothers-in-law have often embarrassed him by courting controversies. On Tuesday, his parents-in-law decided to chip in. They were caught travelling ticketless in the Sampark Kranti Express.
Shiv Prasad Choudhary and his wife Sripati Devi, the parents-in-law of the railway minister, boarded the AC first class coach of the Darbhanga-New Delhi Sampark Kranti Express at Hajipur on Tuesday afternoon. On reaching Chhapra, a TTE asked them to produce their tickets.
The couple contended they were the in-laws of the railway minister but the ticket examiner was not prepared to buy it. Soon there was a flutter at the station as news spread that the parents-in-law of Mr Yadav were travelling without tickets. The daring ticket examiner vanished after the identity of the couple was confirmed.
North eastern railway CPRO M N Singh, however, claimed that the couple was travelling with second-class tickets and as such they had to cough up Rs 1,092 as excess fare for converting second-class tickets into first class AC tickets. Reports, however, suggested the ‘ticket conversion’ was a damage-control story spun by railway officials.
The couple who got down at Siwan were furious when newsmen intercepted them. “We have tickets. You all want to defame us and Laluji. And why should we show the tickets to you,” the couple asked mediapersons. Later, they left for their native Salerkala village in Gopalganj.
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Expectedly, the railway minister’s private secretary, Bhola Yadav, defended the minister’s in-laws and said it was a “conspiracy to defame Laluji and Rabri Devi. They are unable to digest the fact that Laluji could script the turnaround story of railways,” he stated. The opposition, however, slammed Mr Yadav and said the incident was not surprising. “Mr Yadav’s relatives and RJD folks have virtually converted railways into their fiefdom. Mr Yadav has been selling the story of a turnaround on the railways. But surely, this is not the way to run a public sector company,” said BJP MLC Sanjay Jha.
Some time ago, kin of the RJD MP Mr Raghunath Jha was caught by railway authorities for travelling without a ticket near Banaras. Another RJD MP, Mr Subhas Yadav, and brother-in-law of Mr Yadav, had some time back insisted that the Rajdhani be brought to platform number one at Patna junction to facilitate him to board the train from there.
Railway authorities obliged Subash but his elder brother, RJD MP from Gopalganj, Anirduh Prasad, however, was not that lucky when he insisted that the Sampoorna Kranti Express be parked on platform number one.
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