So that our gold is safe at home...

Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee wants to maintain the pressure on Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to waive the service tax on railway freight service. After raising the issue herself in Parliament recently, Banerjee allowed her party MP Kalyan Banerjee to criticise Mukherjee’s Budget on the increase in excise duties on petroleum products and the imposition of service tax on movement of goods by the railways. Mukherjee, on his part, said the government could not live on borrowed resources. Taking a dig at former finance minister and BJP leader, Yashwant Sinha, during whose tenure as finance minister India had to pledge its gold with Bank of England, he said: “Surely, I cannot have a situation where for a few million dollars, we have to pledge the country’s gold.”