MADURAI: There is no record of minutes of the meetings chaired by the minister of railways in the past five years regarding the status of several projects across the country, the ministry of railways has stated in a reply to a RTI query.
In his reply to RTI activist Dayanand Krishnan, the chief public information officer (PIO) Deepak Singh stated "The PIO is not supposed to create information that is not part of the records. No record of the meetings conducted by the Minister of Railways to review the projects is maintained in this office. Only such information as is available and existing and held by the Public Authority or is under control of the public authority can be provided."
Speaking to TNIE, Krishnan said there has been no progress on eight new line projects in Tamil Nadu for more than a decade, and 15 doubling projects are in progress. "The RTI reply revealed there was a lapse in the monitoring and we wanted to know if periodic review meetings were conducted by the railway minister to monitor the projects sanctioned and the status of progress in TN," he said.
He further said it was shocking how the Ministry of Railways is monitoring projects without having the records of review meetings. "The railway ministry must share details of all review meetings in its portal once in three months in a transparent manner," he said.
Dakshin Railway Employees Union(DREU) Divisional Coordinator R Sankara Narayanan said. "Usually pink books will be released three days after the railway budget is presented in Parliament. Though the budget was tabled in February, till now the ministry has not released the pink book that will contain details of ongoing projects. Even MPs would not know the details," he said.
Requesting anonymity, an official in Southern Railway said the minister has been conducting review meetings during his visits to several states. The general manager of Southern Railway periodically conducts meetings with MPs and sends proposals to the ministry, the official added.