Odisha tragedy: As Oppn seeks Vaishnaw’s resignation, saffron party points at accidents during non-BJP rule

Faced with mounting criticism on the Balasore train tragedy, with several Opposition leaders demanding the resignation of Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, the BJP sought to counter these claims by looking at the number of railway accidents and casualties that took place when Opposition leaders Mamata Banerjee, Lalu Yadav and Nitish Kumar were railway ministers.

BJP’s IT Cell chief Amit Malviya took to twitter to release figures from the tenures of the three Opposition leaders, and said that it was a “report card of those who asked for resignation.” The figures show that during Banerjee’s tenure, there were 839 derailments, 54 collisions and 1451 deaths, while during Kumar’s tenure the numbers were 1000, 79 and 1527, respectively. During Lalu’s tenure, there were 550 derailments, 51 collisions and 1159 deaths.

Also Read: Odisha train accident: Timeline of events

Nitish was the union railway minister during the NDA government under the Atal Behari Vajpayee government, while Lalu held the office under the UPA government under Manmohan Singh as prime minister. Banerjee was railway minister under both NDA and UPA governments.

Banerjee was union railway minister first in October 1999 to March 2001 under the NDA government. Nitish Kumar succeeded Bannerjee and was in office from March 2001 to May 2004. Lalu was the railway minister from May 2004 to May 2009.

On Saturday, at the site of the tragedy, standing next to Vaishnaw, Banerjee said that had the anti-collision system been in place, severa lives would have been saved. A day later, Vaishnaw said that the accident happened due to a change in the electronic interlocking. The leaders also disagreed at the spot about the number of casualties; while Mamata said it has reached 500, Vaishnaw said that the toll was 280.

Malviya, who is the party’s Bengal incharge, said in another tweet that Mamata had always done politics over the dead. “From Singur to postpoll violence of 2021, all she has done is - indulged in dirty politics of death and destruction,” the tweet read.

Several BJP supporters online stood by Vaishnaw and his name was trending on twitter.