Tripura criticises Railway budget for ignoring north-east

Agartala, Feb 26 (PTI) Tripura Transport Minister ManikDey today criticised Railway minister Mamata Banerjee forignoring the northeastern region in general and Tripura inparticular in the Railway budget.

"People of Tripura and southern Assam had long beendemanding conversion of the section from Lumbding to adarpurin Assam from meter gauge to broad gauge. If Lumbding-Badarpursection is not converted, the railway track upto Agartala alsocannot be converted to broad gauge", he told reporters.

" The Prime Ministers of India and Bangladesh had signedan agreement in January last year for linking Akhaura in theneighbouring country with Agartala so that a train could beintroduced from Agartala to Kolkata via Dhaka, but there is nomention of it in the Railway budget", he added.

He alleged that the aspirations of the people ofNorth-East from where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gotelected was ignored by Banerjee.

The Railway budget, he said, was completely WestBengal-centric keeping an eye on the forthcoming assemblyelections.