Tamil Nadu coastal tourism circuit gets Centre's nod

Chennai: The Coastal tourism circuit in Tamil Nadu is set to take off with the Union Tourism Ministry approving the project for Rs 100 crore. This will pave way for the development of the entire east coast stretch from Chennai to Kanyakumari — the land's end.

According to the Union Minister of State for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping, Pon Radhakrishnan the Centre has taken steps to develop cruise and coastal tourism in a big way, as these are growing areas of travel in the country.

Already, as part of an initiative to promote cruise tourism, the Narendra Modi government had offered sops to the foreign flag vessels carrying passengers including the facility to call at Indian ports till 2019 without obtaining licence from the Director General of Shipping.

Meanwhile, the Union tourism ministry has taken up the task of improving the infrastructure to improve the cruise tourism including the development of cruise passenger facilitation centre at Cochin Port, development of dedicated cruise berthing facilities at Cochin Port, cruise passenger facilitation centre in the existing passenger terminal at Chennai Port besides cruise terminal building at Mormugao Port Trust.

On Wednesday, the Central government approved the coastal tourism circuit project for Tamil Nadu aiming to develop Chennai-Mamamallapuram-Rameswaram-Manpadu-Kanyakumari at a total cost of Rs 100 crore.

Among the other things, the project includes providing sound and light show, development of beach amenities, construction of pedestrian bridge connecting Vivekanand Rock Memorial with Thiruvalluvar statue.

The circuit will be developed under the Swadesh Darshan programme, which is an integrated development of theme-based tourist circuit that has been taken up on all India basis. Also, Tamil Nadu’s Rameswaram has been included in the Ramayana circuit.