KOCHI: With ‘Metro Man’ E Sreedharan emerging as the pointman for preparing a detailed project report (DPR), there had been much hype in recent weeks over the Centre sanctioning a high-speed rail corridor for Kerala.
The hopes were, however, dashed as the state did not figure in the list of rail corridors announced in the Union Budget on Sunday.
The Budget mentioned the implementation of seven high-speed corridors between cities, namely Mumbai-Pune, Pune-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Bengaluru, Hyderabad-Chennai, Chennai-Bengaluru, Delhi-Varanasi, and Varanasi-Siliguri.
In a scathing reaction, Minister for Industries P Rajeeve said the state was ready to cooperate if the Centre had initiated the high-speed rail corridor project with Sreedharan at the helm.
“However, the Union Budget’s failure to include Kerala, which was the first to come out with such a project, is deplorable. Not only did the central government not approve the high-speed rail project that the state government had submitted, it also failed to include the state in the list,” he pointed out, explaining the reason behind Kerala announcing the Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) project.