Ghani family divided over sops

Team TOI




One hailed it as “visionary”, the other was “utterly disappointed” — Mamata Banerjee’s Railway Budget, which was hailed across North Bengal for its potential to impact the region in a way son of the soil Ghani Khan Chowdhury’s budget did during his tenure in the ’80s, seemed, rather ironically, to have caused a vertical split in the family of the late Congress stalwart.
Just like the geographical division of their constituencies, Malda North MP Mausam Noor and Malda South MP Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury were sharply divided in their reaction to Didi’s budget doles. While Noor, who is Ghani Khan’s niece, chose to look beyond immediate gains, Abu Hasem, his brother, found the budget sops paltry and laced with politics.
But Mamata, who was accused of ignoring North Bengal last year, did make a special attempt to reach out this time. Across cities that dot this region, there was spontaneous cheer as Mamata read her budget speech in Parliament, announcing a slew of projects that ranged from a packaged drinking water plant
in Jalpaiguri’s New Mal to railway training centres in Malda and Cooch Behar and a super speciality hospital in Malda. Two projects — a coach repairing shed proposed at New Jalpaiguri and laying of new tracks between Haldibari and Changrabanda via Mekhliganj — drew the loudest cheers. While the former will generate employment, the latter will augment infrastructure in the region.
Noor congratulated the railway minister for focusing on employment generation, something “baromama (Ghani Khan)” would do. “This rail budget definitely has more vision than immediate gains,” said Noor, adding: “With stress on infrastructure growth, Mamatadi has moved the Indian Railways a step further. Both the hospital and the institute will help create jobs. After baromama, no one has paid any heed to employment generation here.”
But her uncle railed against Mamata’s disregard for a list of proposals he had given her. “None of them (proposals in the list) was sanctioned. I’m utterly disappointed”, said Abu Hasem. “I wanted a Rajdhani express touching Malda, a superfast train between Malda and Kolkata and a train from Malda to Mumbai, among others. But nothing was approved.” ...published in TOI on 25.02.10