Nekkinamalai village to get road in fortnight: Tirupattur Collector

ALANGAYAM (TIRUPATTUR): Residents of the Nekkinamalai tribal village will heave a sigh of relief when the district administration lays a 6 km long road to their hamlet at a cost of Rs 1.5 crore within a fortnight, Collector Amar Kuswaha told DT Next on Monday.

This follows a Nekkinamalai resident Saravanan (50) who was running a small eatery in Bengaluru succumbing to kidney related ailments two days ago. His body was brought by ambulance from Bengaluru to the foot of Nekkinamalai on Sunday night from where his body was strapped to a dholi and carried by foot to the village 6 km away.

As one local told this reporter, “usually we carry sick patients by dholi to the hospital from the village, but this time we had to carry a dead person up the hill.” The village has not had a road from the time of the nation’s Independence and so villagers in a bid to do the needful laid a mud road which became unusable when it was washed away by the recent rain.

Asked about this, Collector Amar Kuswaha said, “I visited Nekkinamalai sometime ago based on which a report seeking access from the Forest Department was sent to the office of the principal conservator of forests. They raised a query which was answered successfully following which permission to lay the road was granted.”

“The road would be laid under the Prime Minister’s Gram Sadak Yojana under which connectivity is provided to unconnected habitations as part of the poverty reduction strategy,” the Collector concluded.