Mamata Banerjee in New Delhi on Thursday. (PTI)

New Delhi, July 9: The railways have a cash surplus of only Rs 8,361 crore and not Rs 90,000 crore as claimed by former railway minister Lalu Prasad.

Railway minister Mamata Banerjee today put a question mark on the turnaround story tom-tomed by her predecessor and said she would come out with a white paper on the performance of the railways in the last five years.

The turnaround tale of the railways has been a subject of study at various management schools, including Wharton School in the US and IIM-Ahmedabad.

The BJP, which has been gunning for Lalu and looking at an opportunity to pin him down before the assembly polls in Bihar next year, demanded that the white paper be presented on the first day of the winter session of Parliament.

Mamata declined to set any date for the white paper and said it would be placed “as soon as possible”.

The Rs 28,600-crore rise in the wage bill of 14 lakh employees because of the Sixth Pay Commission report has eroded the cash surplus, she said. The railways will also pay a dividend to the finance ministry and meet other expenses, leaving it with just Rs 8,361 crore.When Lalu Prasad remarked that the surplus had come down this year, Mamata said, “I am just into the job for a month.”

Former railway ministers George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar had prepared similar white papers, Mamata said. The exercise will help to prepare a road map for progress, she said. Replying to the debate on the rail budget for 2009-10, which was passed by both Houses, Mamata said the white paper would not target any individual.

Mamata also took on the BJP, which had criticised her decision to revive the optic fibre cable plan. She had initiated the project when she was the railway minister in the NDA government. “Why blame me now. I initiated the projects for the commercial utilisation of railway land and optic fibre cable while I was in the NDA. You did not oppose it then,” she said.

She extended the scheme of 50 per cent concession to police medal winners and recognised artists on the Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains and announced two more non-stop Duranto (fast) trains — Delhi-Secunderabad and Delhi-Nagpur — in addition to the 12 such trains already announced.