Muniyappa to handle railway safety

As per the work allocation made by Union Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee, Muniyappa also has to take care of the complaints regarding freight traffic, a major source of revenue for the railways.

Apart from this, he has to oversee the railway development in Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh. Train punctuality, cleanliness and passenger amenities will be looked after by E Ahamed, another Minister of State. Ahamed has been entrusted with the states of Bihar, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Assam and Jharkhand. Official sources said Mamata would oversee her home state West Bengal,  important and large states like Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. Keeping her earlier promise, Mamata has  assigned the maximum work to her deputies.

As the assigning of jobs to junior ministers is entirely the prerogative of the senior minister, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had recently written to all cabinet ministers to allocate the maximum possible work to their deputies.

Armed with handful of work this time, Muniyappa cannot complain about his senior Minister about bias in assigning responsibilities. Muniyappa, who served as the Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways in previous UPA dispensation, had always complained that he didn’t get justice from his former boss, Union Minsiter T R Baalu.

RRB exams

Concerned over the frequent leakage of question papers of the Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) exams, the Railway Ministry is contemplating adopting measures to “streamline” the board’s functioning to prevent the leakage of papers. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday in Lucknow, K H Muniyappa said: “Efforts are on to streamline the functioning of the RRB and curb the malpractices.”