Mamata meets trade, industry representatives

She strode in like a hurricane and rattled up everything. "I cannot be seated while people are standing. Bring up the chairs here on stage". That was railways minister Mamata Banerjee.

She strode in like a hurricane and rattled up everything.

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"I cannot be seated while people are standing. Bring up the chairs here on stage".

That was railways minister Mamata Banerjee. The occasion: An interactive session with representatives of trade and industry. Huge commotion prevailed as plastic chairs were hurriedly brought up to the podium and industry representatives were asked to come up and occupy them.

The delegation accompanying the railways minister -including ministers of state E Ahamad and Dinesh Trivedi - finally had their chance to occupy their chairs after everyone else was seated.

Before one had realised it, the mood in the auditorium had suddenly lifted and the stage had been set for a participative discussions.

So far, the railways efforts at attracting private investments for Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects have failed to bring concrete results.

But at her second interaction with the industry captains on Wednesday, Banerjee made another strong pitch.

"The Railways offers ready-made business opportunities. Potential investment areas include PPP plans for building new rail tracks and stations besides the Dedicated Freight Corridor project", she said.

Approximately 150 industry representatives were present including the Adani Rail Logistics, Maruti Suzuki Limited, Jindal Steel and Power limited and the EMD locomotive technologies.