Title - Non-performer CP Joshi to chug railways

Transport minister CP Joshi took over additional charge as the railway minister on Saturday after the ignominious exit of Pawan Kumar Bansal in the wake of the cash-for-jobs racket being run by his nephew Vijay Singla. A full-fledged Cabinet reshuffle is planned in the coming week.

This is the second time Joshi will be handling the railway ministry in the past six months. He was given the additional charge of the ministry for about five weeks in September when the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress withdrew from the UPA government on diesel price and FDI issues. Joshi was entrusted the highway ministry after the January 2011 Cabinet reshuffle. Having nothing on the performance front from his previous portfolio of rural development, it was only his clean image that helped him get the highway ministry. Incidentally, Bansal too had a clean image when he took over as the railway minister.

“Transparency has been the key agenda since his first day in the transport ministry,” said an official from the highway ministry. “Immediately after the minister joined, he put the ministry on Facebook to address the concerns of highway users and made complaint redress online,” added the official.

The transport minister has spearheaded consumer initiatives, such as making a database of all the vehicles and licences for quick tracking and hassle-free transfers. However, performance has still been an issue in his three-year stint at the highway ministry.
A highway industry source, who did not wish to be named said, “In any case, we are not building infrastructure for the future. We are basically catching up with the past. The urgency to take up the herculean task of building a 20km of highway every day is essentially lacking in the ministry.”