It is clear as daylight that Mamata Banerjee has neither competence nor inclination to run the railway ministry. She is too engrossed with the West Bengal politics to know the difference between a human failure (or signal failure as the home ministry said), that led to the collision of two trains near Sainthia in West Bengal and a sabotage that she insists on to explain the accident (and her failure).

In fact, it has become a habit with her to blame her political rivals for the accidents (there have been nearly 200 accidents since she took over). The last time around, when the Jnaneswari Express collided with a goods train in May claiming close to 150 lives, she blamed it on the Left Front government in the state and forced a CBI probe even when the Maoists were taking the blame and apologising for it.

She is hardly ever in New Delhi to attend to her ministerial responsibilities, like for example, taking stock of safety measures required to avoid accidents—upgradation and maintenance of signaling system, installation of anti-collision devices, appointment of nearly 90,000 vacancies of gangmen, signalmen and others who are crucial to railway safety etc. She doesn’t bother to attend cabinet meetings even if she is in New Delhi. Worse, she neither takes responsibility for the mishaps nor shows any inclination to take corrective steps--not even a lip service.

She has her reasons to cling to the office and that is clearly to hand out largesse to her home state in order to win the next assembly elections there. That's all she cares. Mounting deaths from rising accidents are of no consequence to her. One wonders what makes the prime minister not to do the obvious and that is to sack the irresponsible and utterly incompetent Mamata Banerjee without a minute's delay.