Sonia lays stone for Coach Factory in Rae Bareli

Lalganj (Rae Bareli), Feb 13: Congress president and local MP Sonia Gandhi today laid the foundation for the country's third Rail Coach Factory here and later flagged off a bi-weekly Rae Bareli-Lokmanya Tilak Link Express.

Congress MP from adjoining Amethi constituency, Rahul Gandhi, Railway minister Lalu Prasad and other dignitaries were present during the function at Baiswara Inter College, about four km from the factory's actual site.

In her brief speech, Ms Gandhi lauded the efforts of Mr Prasad as Railway Minister saying, ''Laluji is doing a good job and he understands well, the value of Indian Railways.'' ''The way Laluji has undertaken the Railways' development, it is also putting the country ahead in growth,'' she said.

Speaking on the occasion, Amethi MP Rahul Gandhi said, '''Roti-Kapda-Makaan' are the three essentials for the people and the new factory will give a right platform for providing job opportunities in Uttar Pradesh.

''There is enough youth potential here, but what is needed is a forward looking approach in this computer age,'' he observed.

The Railway Minister said the coach factory was not just for Rae Bareli, ''but for entire UP''.

''It will create enough job opportunities for the state,'' he said adding the unit would be completed by 2011.

Giving details of the rail coach factories, he said it was great that Ms Gandhi was laying the foundation for the third unit, as the foundation stone of the first unit at Chennai was laid by former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the second in Kapurthala by Rajiv Gandhi.

Mr Prasad lambasted the UP government for its ''delay'' in handing over the land for the factory. ''The state government was forced to give us the required land, after I decided to lay the foundation from the railway station, if they had delayed it any futher.''

The proposed factory will produce 1,000 coaches annually, which will enable Indian Railways wipe out arrears of overaged and old-design coaches. It will provide jobs to locals, who have been demanding such opportunities in the region. It will have a capacity of building modern coaches, presumably the LHB model, which has become standard coaches for the prestigious Rajdhani and Shatabdi Express trains.

At present, Railways own two coach building units, Perambur in Chennai and Kapurthala in Punjab. Together they produce more than 2,000 coaches a year. Ms Gandhi had announced setting up of the RCF at Lalganj on December 6, 2006, while addressing a gathering at Unchahar in Rae Bareli.

In December 2006, the Railway Ministry had sought approval for setting up a new coach factory at Rae Bareli at a cost of around Rs 17 billion.

''The proposal for setting up the new unit was put forward in the supplementary demands for grants in December 2006,'' Minister of state for Railways R Velu had said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.

The new coach factory in Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's high-profile constituency will take the number of production units under the Railways Ministry to seven.

The six operational units, include Chittaranjan Locomotive Works, (CLW) at Chittaranjan in West Bengal, Diesel Locomotive Works (DLW) at Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai, Rail Coach Factory (RCF) in Kapurthala, Punjab, Rail Wheel Factory (RWF) in Bangalore and the Diesel Loco Modernisation Works (DMW) at Patiala, Punjab.

UNI