Vijayan's dream project K-Rail likely to remain as a dream

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala's biggest infrastructure project, Silver Line (K-Rail), which was the dream project of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and which he vowed to continue with despite the massive state-wide protests, is likely to remain a dream.

In August this year, Vijayan informed the Assembly that the project will not be shelved and is awaiting the Centre's clearance, but on Saturday, it became very evident, for all practical purposes, that project is defunct when it was known that 205 state government employees deputed to the 11 office of K-Rail have been asked to report back to their parent departments.

The project was seen as the Chief Minister's pet project and soon after taking over the office for the second time after the 2021 Assembly elections, he had expressed his determination to go ahead with it.

But contrary to his expectations, as the preliminary work of identifying the land for the project started, it was met with stiff resistance from a large section of the public who staged protests across the state, including in his home turf - Kannur.

Despite several appeals from various quarters, Vijayan was adamant on making the project a reality.

To his shock, the CPI-M was decimated in the Thrikkakara Assembly by poll in May, making the completion of the project tougher.

Following it, things went into a limbo.

Metroman E.Sreedharan had termed the K-Rail proposal an "idiotic" one and said that it will never be implemented as it is neither economically feasible nor environmentally viable.

And on Saturday, he said Vijayan was misled by some quarters about the whole project.

"This was never a technically feasible one and it was never a sound project too," said Sreedharan.

If completed, the K-Rail project would have seen a 529.45 km corridor connecting Thiruvananthapuram to Kasaragod with semi-high speed trains covering the distance in around four hours.

Both the Congress and the BJP said this project is not needed for Kerala given the massive cost which they say would exceed Rs 1.50 lakh crore. Besides being an environmental and economic disaster, it would be a huge burden for the next generation, the parties said.

But for long, Vijayan and the ruling Left was saying the cost will be around Rs 65,000 crore only.

One reason why this project despite all the rhetoric of Vijayan, failed to come anywhere near implementation was it never had the concurrence or any sort of clearance from the Centre.

Vijayan was adamant and hence saw the state government holding meetings with an invited audience at 11 districts of the state explaining the merits and why this project would be a game changer.

"We want to hear the news through a government order that his project has been called off and we also want the state government to withdraw all the cases registered against the protesters because they were fighting for their land and property, which would have gone, had the project began," said Maria Abu, who was one of the live wire protesters against the project.