Bihar was once the beneficiary of the largesse by past railway ministers Jagjiwan Ram, Ram Subhag Singh, L N Mishra, Kedar Pandey, Ram Vilas Paswan, Nitish Kumar, Digvijay Singh and Lalu Yadav who moved some major projects in the state.
But the case is not so anymore. The state is now waiting for the materialisation of unfulfilled promises made by different ministers.
A number of rail projects, including three mega bridges, the Patna - Sonpur rail-cum-road bridge and two locomotive projects one at Mahaura in Saran district and another at Madhepura are running far behind their schedule owing to low financial allocation in the Railway budget.
Many of these projects are moving at snail’s pace due to low fund allocation in the past 3 to 4 years, particularly during Mamata Banerjee’s tenure as railway minister. Due to high population density and huge number of migrants moving out for employment and education, a demand for additional superfast trains like Duranto from the state particularly to the places like Delhi, Mumbai , Surat and Chennai was made. Despite the improvement made in the roadways, the railways remain a popular mode of transport among the public causing heavy rush in local trains.
More MEMUs and DMUs have been demanded by passengers’ associations particularly on the Patna-Gaya, Patna-Buxar and Patna-Jhajha routes to cope with the heavy rush.