On Thursday, Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Minister for Railways, decided he’d had enough of the Opposition’s heckling over recent train derailments and gave a spirited rebuttal in the Lok Sabha. Channeling the kind of energy usually reserved for a dramatic soap opera, Vaishnaw, fuming like a steam engine, took issue with being called the “reel minister.” He argued that safety measures were practically non-existent during the Congress era, and accused the Opposition of always trying to score political points.
Vaishnaw fired back, “Those who are hollering here should explain why they couldn’t install Automatic Train Protection (ATP) even for 1 km in their 58 years of ruling. Now, they have the audacity to question us?” He had a few choice words for Rahul Gandhi too, mentioning his locomotive driver photo-ops, implying the Congress was more about show than substance.
In the midst of his tirade, Rashtriya Loktantrik Party MP Hanuman Beniwal chimed in, “You are a reel minister, you are a derail minister.” To which Vaishnaw responded with all the subtlety of a freight train, “You please shut up.”
“We don’t just make reels, we actually work hard,” he retorted, defending himself against the social media jibes from the Opposition MPs.
Vaishnaw then dropped some stats, saying that under the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, the annual average number of accidents was a whopping 171. But under the BJP government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that number has been slashed by 68 percent. So, while the Opposition might see him as a TikTok enthusiast, Vaishnaw claims he’s actually getting things done.
