The Hindu : National Highway to Kanyakumari to be made four-lane

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 09, 2004

Kerala

Kerala

National Highway to Kanyakumari to be made four-lane

By Our Staff Reporter

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM. FEB. 8. The existing stretch of the National Highway connecting Thiruvananthapuram with Kanyakumari would be converted into a four-lane road, the Union Minister for Transport and Highways, B.C. Khanduri, said here today.

The Minister was speaking at a function got up in connection with the inauguration of the Thiruvananthapuram-Neyyattinkara combined by-pass road and the rail over-bridge at Chacka.

Work was currently progressing on five by-pass roads in the State, he said. The problem of land acquisition in the heavily-populated State was a major stumbling block. The State and the Centre should work in tandem to ensure that such development activity was not affected by undue delays, he said.

During the last 50 years, the rate of construction of National Highways (NH) in the country was about 11 km a year. In the last five years, 11 km of NH was being built in a day, he claimed. In Kerala alone, 536 km of NH had been constructed in the last five years. In the 50 years preceding that, only 594 km of NH was built in Kerala, he said.

In the post-Pokhran years, nobody thought the Centre would have the funds to take up projects such as the `Golden quadrilateral' or the North-South and East-West corridors. However, the Prime Minister was confident this could be done, he said.

"Today, my Ministry is working on converting 24,000 km of roads into four-lane roads at a cost of Rs. 98,000 crores. We are in a hurry on matters of development," Mr. Khanduri said.

The Union Minister of State for Defence, O. Rajagopal, said it was wrong to say that Thiruvananthapuram was the lone State capital that had been left out of the mega road projects announced by the Centre. In fact, 16 State capitals do not figure in the list. "My request to the Union Minister for Highways is that the Thiruvananthapuram-Kanyakumari road widening scheme be included in the Pradhan Manthri Bharat Jodo Pariyojana (PMBJP)," Mr. Rajagopal said.

Referring to the development of the Vizhinjam port and the Vallarpadam terminal, he said the State Government wanted the container terminal to come up at Vallarpadam. Vizhinjam could be developed as a modern port and used for travel between major ports.

In the Sagarmala project, everything would be done to make Vizhinjam a modern port. It was not as though Vallarpadam was being sacrificed to develop Vizhinjam. In the case of the city's international airport, the Centre was in favour of setting up a second terminal.

The necessary land should, however, be handed over for this, Mr. Rajagopal said.

Ealier, in his address, the Cooperation Minister, M.V. Raghavan, said the Vizhinjam port could be built on just the money spent on daily dredging at Vallarpadam where the waters were much shallower than in the Vizhinjam port.

"Of the two mega trans-shipment terminals announced by the Prime Minister, one should be at Vizhinjam," Mr. Raghavan said.

Similarly, the airports in Kochi and Kozhikode, built after the Thiruvananthapuram airport, had progressed much in terms of facilities, leaving the city's airport far behind. The Public Works Minister, M.K., Muneer presided over the function.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Kerala