File photo of Former Union minister Jairam Ramesh.
A strong pitch was made in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday for doing away with the Railway Budget with a few members feeling that it was a colonial era practice not relevant anymore.
"...The Railway budget is a colonial idea whose time is over. Today, Railway expenditure accounts for only six per cent of the general expenditure of the government...Why should we have a separate budget for the Railways?," said Jairam Ramesh (Congres), who was a minister in the United Progressive Alliance or UPA government.
He was participating in a discussion on the Railway Budget in the Rajya Sabha.
Mr Ramesh suggested that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Railway Minister Sadananda Gowda give a "serious thought" to the idea of abolishing the separate budget for the Railways.
The demand received support from Rangasayee Ramakrishna (BJP), who hoped that the Modi government will do away with this practice in the next two to three years.
"We should do away with this practice of the colonial era... we should go for corporations of the railways for performing different tasks such as looking after maintenance of railway stations," he said.
Earlier, Mr Ramesh held the separate budget as "the root cause" of the financial disaster in the Railways and said that as long as the practice remains, the turnaround of the Railways was not possible.
During the British era in 1925, the tradition of presenting a separate budget for the Railways started perhaps because it was the largest industrial asset of the country then.
Stating that the Railways spend around 28,000 crore on social obligations in a year, Mr Ramesh suggested that the fund should come from the general budget.