Sunday, February 26 2006 11:56 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Railways Minister Lalu Prasad's rail budget has brought on a smile on the face of DMK chief M Karunanidhi ahead of the key Tamil Nadu Assembly polls, but that appears to be only half the story.

Prasad's exercise, hailed by the trade and industry for some bold moves, has also raised a hornet's nest in several other states including Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh and have raised the hackles of the Left ahead of the West Bengal and Kerala polls.

While Prasad's RJD with 26 MPs is the second largest constituent of the ruling UPA after Congress, DMK is the third largest with 16 members in the Lok Sabha.

But the Left which has a fight at hand in West Bengal and Kerala are not amused with the budget provisions and have even threatened to vote against the measure if the proposed Eastern Freight Corridor was not extended upto Kolkata.

Prasad has taken lightly the Left's concerns dismissing suggestions that they would create any problems for the Budget saying that the CPI-M and its allies were unnecessarily seeing politics in the issue ahead of the polls, where none exists.

He says that his Railway Budget speech itself made it clear that the corridor would be extended to ports in West Bengal as per traffic needs.