While talking about the Railway’s captive power plants, Banerjee said that the new 1000 MW plant would come up at Adra in Purulia district in collaboration with the National Thermal Power Corporation. The location is of “great importance,” she said. Little surprise, this is an underdeveloped tribal area and providing employment opportunities here, she hopes, will help consolidate her political base.

The biggest snub for the Left came when she proposed to take over Burn Standard and Braithwaite — both Central PSUs. Burn Standard, with 1006 workers in its two units at Howrah and Asansol, has an accumulated loss of about Rs 438 crore. Braithwaite has about 200 workers on its permanent payroll and another 300 on contract. As per the 2002 balance sheet of the company — the last time it had one — the company has about Rs 150 crore in accumulated losses and has been up for sale. But it has not found a buyer.

Similarly, Banerjee proposed to take over the Basumati Sahitya Mandir — a state PSU lying idle for the past two years. “It’s a heritage institution and played a vital role in the freedom movement...I would be happy to take it over if the state government hands it over to the Railways,” Banerjee said. When word was doing the rounds a couple of days ago that Basumati could be taken take over by the Railways and used for Railway printing jobs, Nirupam Sen, the state Industries Minister had said: “If she does it, we will welcome it.”

... contd.