Is Pinarayi Vijayan's confidence on K-Rail project waning?

Thiruvananthapuram, July 27 The confidence which Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan exuded while convincing the Thrikkakara voters about the proposed K-Rail project ahead of Assembly bypolls in May seems to be ebbing.

With Congress' resounding victory in the bypoll, it was more or less clear that Vijayan's dream will remain a dream.

On June 14, Vijayan while speaking at a seminar on building a new Kerala, the chief minister said that initially the Centre was positive, but in the wake of strong opposition protests here, it is now having second thoughts about the K-Rail project.

"For the K-Rail project to progress, the Centre's sanction is a must," said Vijayan. While interacting with the media on Tuesday night, he lamented that it's unfortunate that the Centre has not taken a favourable stand in the project.

"This project will not be able to go forward without the Centre's sanction. The state began the preliminary work after getting an in-principle approval from the Centre, but now it appears they have gone backwards," said Vijayan.

For several days, there were massive protests against the marking stone laid by K-Rail across the state and surprisingly even at Vijayan's home town-Kannur, people came out in large numbers to protest against the project.

Incidentally, the Congress and the BJP all along have been up in arms against this project. Metroman E.Sreedharan was one of the first to call the proposal "idiotic" and will never be implemented as it's neither economically feasible nor environmentally viable.

But all along Vijayan and his CPI-M and the Left front was confidently telling the people that the project will get going, while top BJP leaders like Union Minister of State for External Affairs V.Muraleedharan and former Union Minister K.J.Alphons and all state leaders assured the protesters against this project that the Centre will not give the sanction for this.

Slamming Vijayan, Leader of Opposition V.D.Satheesan said: "Finally the arrogance of Vijayan who was determined to go forward with this project failed to sense the public sentiment and as a result crores of money has been now spent".

"The money spent for this uncleared project has to be recovered from those who went forward with it and wish to know what action is going to be taken on this," he added.

If completed, the project will see 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 says this project is not needed for Kerala given the massive cost which they say will be in excess of Rs 1.50 lakh crore and would be an environmental and economic disaster and would be a huge burden for the next generation, while Vijayan and his men have been saying the cost will be around Rs 65,000 crore only.

And now with Vijayan himself spelling out, in the coming days, the game plan of Vijayan and the Left ruling alliance will be blaming the Centre and the Congress unit here for stalling development projects in Kerala as he has already sounded, "Unfortunately this project is labelled as one of the Left," lamented Vijayan.

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