today

Mumbai, July 7: Security personnel today lathicharged a crowd that thronged a function held by Western Railway at Borivali station where Railway Minister Lalu Prasad had come to inaugurate the additional lines between Borivali and Virar.

Instead of plain rhetoric, Lalu Prasad on Saturday mixed histrionics with facts. He said the quadrupling of tracks between Borivli and Virar, a Rs 505-crore project that lingered for over a decade, was just the trailer. (The project—tracks between Borivli and Virar—comes under the World Bank-funded Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP-I).

With a straight face, he also promised Rajya Sabha MP Hema Malini a special train for Bollywood actors, adding that he could not afford to turn down a request from one of his favourite stars. "One of my daughters is named after Hema Malini ji," he said.

Ironically, a short while before the police took to batons, the Railway Minister, while refering to the rehabilitation of the people living along the railway tracks, had categorically stated that the UPA government did not believe in the forceful eviction of the people, and that his government did not believe in the rule by baton.