Former Delhi chief minister Sahib Singh Verma has rejected the claims made by Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit that the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation is her government's baby.
Dikshit had said that the Bharatiya Janata Party has hijacked her dream project by appointing Madan Lal Khurana as its chairman couple of days before the train was formally launched on December 24 by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Khurana has, for the whole of the last week, been trying to explain to the media that there was no political motive behind his appointment and he would be working more as a facilitator rather than a political boss.
Verma, who had come to congratulate Madan Lal Khurana on his appointment as the chairman of the DMRC, nearly hogged the limelight in the press conference being addressed by Khurana.
"We reject the claim of Mrs Sheila Dikshit that the Metro was her government's project. This is a totally untenable claim. The first budgetary provision for the DMRC was made during the chief ministership of Madan Lal Khurana," he said.
He claimed that his government appointed E Sreedharan as managing director, when he [Verma] was the chief minister of Delhi.
"We had appointed Sreedharan saheb as managing director of DMRC on November 5, 1997, after seeing his outstanding record as the architect of Konkan railway. DMRC effectively started functioning on October 2, 1998. Where was Sheila Dikshit at that time?" he said.
He said the Delhi Metro would be a big issue in the forthcoming Delhi state assembly election, to be held in the later part of 2003.
Meanwhile, Khurana has said that he would soon talk to the Vajpayee and Deputy Prime Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani and recommend the name of Sreedharan for a national award for his contribution to the metro rail.
"I would certainly be recommending his name for Padma Vibhushan for the outstanding work done by E Sreedharan and his team. The credit for the success of the Delhi Metro should go to him and his men," Khurana said.
Sreedharan has already been bestowed with the Padma Shri for his outstanding record as the architect of the Konkan railway.
Khurana said that Delhi Metro Police would be raised to deal effectively with the crimes committed on board the train like pick pocketing, eve teasing, robbery and related crimes.
"We are going to raise a work force of 160 to police the Delhi metro. In addition, the Delhi police is also making special arrangements to deal with the threat from the terrorists, including dog squads," he said.
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