THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: PWD Minister V K Ebrahim Kunju has convened a meeting of the MP and MLAs in Thiruvananthapuram in order to sort out the issues regarding alignment for the widening of the National Highway (NH) connecting Karamana and Kaliyakkavila. The meeting will be held on Wednesday.
A monitoring committee was formed in October with PWD Minister as its head. MLAs of Nemom, Kovalam, Kattakada, Neyyattinkara and Parassala are the other members. However, the committee has not even met once. The committee members were given the CD of the alignment. However, some of the MLAs had said that they had not received any such CD.
While the deadlock over the widening of NH continued, the government decided to go ahead with the 30.2-metre widening in an all-party meeting convened by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on October 3.
Fair compensation was announced to remove the hurdles of land acquisition. The design for junction improvement too was asked to be completed soon.
After the inauguration of road-widening works in November 2010 by the then Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan, the works were stalled following protest from local traders. After Chief Minister Oommen Chandy’s intervention, survey of a 12-km stretch recently got completed.
The proposal was to develop the 30-km NH connecting Karamana to Kaliyakkavila to a four-lane road with a width of 30.2 m. Of the total 30 km, the first phase will cover almost 12 km from Karamana to Vazhimukku.