By : Sabatini Chatterjee
Recently, the Left Democratic Front (LDG) government of Kerala has passed a notification to acquire land for its Silver Line Project. This is considered as Kerala’s flagship semi high-speed railway project aimed at reducing travel time between the state’s southern end and state capital Thiruvananthapuram with its northern end of Kasaragod.
The line proposed in the project is around 529.45 kms long, covering 11 districts through 11 stations. After completion of the Project, an individual can travel from Kasaragod to Thiruvananthapuram in less than 4-hours on trains travelling at 200 km/hr. The current travel time on the existing Indian Railways network is 12 hours on the same route. Furthermore, the LDF government claims the proposed railway line will diminish greenhouse gas emissions, aid in growth of Ro-Ro services (Roll-on and Roll-off services), generate employment opportunities, integrate airports and IT corridors and faster progress of cities as it passes along the way.
The project isappraised to cost around Rs. 63,940 crores.Thus, this is one of the biggest infrastructure enterprises being pushed by the ruling LDF government of Kerala. And, the deadline for the project is 2025 which is being executed by the Kerala Rail Development Corporation Limited (KRDCL). The KRDCL also known as K-Rail in the state of Kerala, is a joint venture between the Kerala government and the Union Ministry of Railways.
Nonetheless, the 2025 deadline is not a viable target as because land acquisition in a highly densely-populated state like Kerala is quite hectic. There’s also substantialdisapproval to the project by environmentalists quotinglatent damage to the state’s ecosystem in the path of the anticipated route. The environmentalists fear that this project would cause permanentdamage to the state’s rivers, paddy fields and wetlands, prompting floods and landslides in future. In this context, Kerala Paristhithi Aikya Vedi, a council of ecological experts and activists, has called upon the LDF government to discard the SilverLine project and explore other possible sustainable resolutions such as use of Electric vehicles (buses) and other greener means of transport. The author works as a Research Assistant at the Cultural Research Institute, Kolkata under Backward Class Welfare Department, Government of West Bengal.