Kerala: Railway action council for serial protest

KALPETTA: The Nilgiri-Wayanad National Highway and Railway Action council constituted to mobilize public opinion in favour of the Nilambur-Nanjangud railway project and expansion of national highways, which successfully battled many hurdles for the dream project, has decided to launch a series of agitations against the LDF government for "deliberately" delaying procedures for the railway project. Even after issuing an order to release Rs 2 crore as the first installment for preparation of the Detailed Project Report (DPR) to Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), some powers in the state government acted against releasing the money to DMRC, it was pointed out.

As a first step, a protest gathering and human chain will be organized in front of the Civil Station, here, on Monday. M.P. Veerendrakumar MP will inaugurate the agitation in which I.C. Balakrishnan MLA and Kerala Congress (Thomas) leader P.C. Thomas are expected to participate.  In a press release here, the action council said that '8 crore was sanctioned by the state government in June, 2016, and DMRC was also assigned the job. "But some dark elements in the government were against depositing Rs 2 crore in the DMRC’s account and also tried to force it to back out of the project", the release alleged. The state government is yet to give a direction to the forest department to give permission to the DMRC to conduct a survey for the railway line.

So far the government had not initiated even a single step to get permission from the Karnataka forest department, the release said. The action council further said that the DMRC had done several preparatory works like satellite survey and traffic survey and the alignment of the railway line as there was an order by the state assigning DMRC the job.  But the operations were stopped midway due to the delay in depositing the released funds despite an earlier order.

It is to be recalled that the DMRC survey has stated that the rail line would cross the Eco Sensitive Zones outside the jungle about 40 metres down the surface through tunnels. The draft project prepared through the satellite survey suggested tunnels to cross the Western Ghats. Of the total distance of 176 kilometres from Nilambur to Nanjangud, 26 kilometers is through tunnels.