NEW DELHI: The government on Monday referred a Bill to amend the Railways Act, 1989, to prevent duplication in filing compensation claims for train accidents and define cases of "accidental falling" eligible for compensation to a standing committee.
Responding to the demand of the opposition parties including the Congress, Samajwadi Party, Trinamool Congress and Left, etc, to let the "lacunae" in the Bill be debated in the standing committee before its passage in the Lok Sabha, railway minister D V Sadananda Gowda said: "If there is confusion regarding the amendments to the Bill and the members think it needs to go to the standing committee, I concede their demand".
Sadananda Gowda's statement came after many MPs, cutting across party lines, objected to the government's move to amend Section 123 of the Railways Act to exclude accidental falling of passengers standing at the door of a moving train, from eligible cases for compensation. While Congress MP K C Venugupal and BJD's Tathagat Satpathy said it was unfair as passengers had no choice but to stand next to the door as they far outnumbered the seats, the Trinamool, SP and BJP dubbed the amendment as "anti-poor" and alleged it was meant to absolve the railways from compensating poor people "packed into overbooked general compartments".
Shrikant Shinde, while highlighting the various cases of accidental falling from Mumbai's suburban trains, said this was as much the responsibility of the railways. The railway minister later clarified that this indeed was the case as regards passengers falling from stationary trains (at the platform). Other MPs, including Satpathy and BJP's Kirit Somaiah suggested raising of the platform height and automated doors as solutions to arrest falling incidents. Shiv Sena even demanded that the suburban railways be left out of purview of the Bill.
The members also objected to the amendment seeking to make the railways at the place of accident a party to claims cases. "This would put the onus of proving one's eligibility for compensation on the poor victim and his family," said RSP MP N K Premachandran.
Winding up the arguments, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge asked that government why the Bill, which was "not an urgent or emergent matter", could not be referred to the standing committee for a quick scrutiny.
Parliamentary affairs minister M Venkaiah Naidu pointed out that the Railways Amendment Bill was introduced as "I had heard a senior Congress leader, who is also a former railway minister (an implicit reference to Kharge), that this Bill was simple and there should be no problem in passing it". "The minister (Gowda) mentioned that you yourself drafted the amendments," Naidu told the Congress benches, adding that "you may have now realized that these are not good".
"But if you have any apprehensions, we have no problem as it is not an ideological or prestige issue for us...Let the bill go to the parliamentary standing committee," he said, before Gowda finally did so.
According to the railway minister, the cases of accidental compensation were up from 136 in 1994-95, involving a total compensation of Rs 26 lakh, to 8,157 in 2010-11, involving a compensation of Rs 164 crore.
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