Thumbs up for Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu from aam-aadmi! On MyGov.in, a portal run by the government of India, PM Narendra Modi has asked the common man to rate his government. Ranking right there at the top, with 70.96% 5-star rating (in an ongoing poll), are the initiatives taken by the government in railway modernisation.

Ratings have been solicited by the PM on 15 of his pet projects. At the end of these responses, (and they are there for anyone who logs on to MyGov.in to see), the scores on just what and whose work makes the cut in the government are telling.

Following Railway Ministry, is roads and highways. The Nitin Gadkari-led ministry has scored 66.32% 5-star rating. Number three is External Affairs Ministry under Sushma Swaraj. Her Ministry’s work gets 66.55% 5-star rating.

Make in India, and initiatives taken under power sector are the next two popular areas of government work with 53% 5-star rating. This is an online poll running on http://www.mygov.in, but doesn’t give one the provision to check how many people have participated in it. At the time of publishing this story, the total number of submissions in the poll stood at 19955.

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All this said and done, PM Modi is unhappy with the ‘slow pace’ of railways.

According to an Indian Express Report on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it seems, is not impressed with the Railways. During an infrastructure review meeting at NITI Aayog last week, Narendra Modi is learnt to have complained that there was hardly any “visible progress” on key projects. These included the redevelopment of 400 stations and setting up of a Rail University, and other initiatives such as using advertisements for generating revenue.

In the course of the review of the railways sector, it was noted that the capital investment in 2015-16 was over Rs 93,000 crore, “which represents a massive increase of 65 per cent over the previous year, and is the highest-ever”, a PMO statement said last week.

“The Prime Minister stressed upon the need to speed up the redevelopment of Railway Stations, and urged the railways to substantially raise its level of ambition in this regard,” it added.

He emphasized the need for the railways to upgrade and diversify the uses of its infrastructure, the statement said.

However, Modi was all praises for the Suresh Prabhu-led Railways Ministry in his tweets.

“Centre is working on upgrading rail infra. In rural areas this will boost skill development & increase non-fare revenue for railways,” Modi tweeted later.

 

“Progress in commissioning of lines & electrification of lines has been commendable. Discussed speeding up process of redeveloping stations,” he said in another tweet.