Under Mamata Banerjee as railway minister, 1,451 people died in 54 cases of collisions and 839 incidents of train derailments, he said. Death toll was 1,159 when Lalu Yadav was the minister while the corresponding figure for Nitish Kumar was 1,527. Yadav was the minister in the first term of the UPA government while Kumar was at the helm during the NDA government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
