NEW DELHI: The Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure on Thursday approved two major infrastructure projects that would offload a major chunk of transport bottleneck in southern states _ the electrification of the muchawaited Shoranur-Mangalore-Penambur section of the railways and the upgradation of Hyderabad-Bengaluru section of NH-7.
The electrification of the Shoranur-Mangalore- Penambur section has 315km running through Kerala benefiting the six districts, i.e. Palghat, Malappuram, Kozhikode, Kannur and Kasargod and 13km in Karnataka.
With the electrification, the Chennai-Mangalore corridor would reap immense benefits with unhampered and faster freight and traffic movements.
The cost of electrification of the stretch is estimated at Rs 302.50 crore with an allocation of Rs 45.38 crore in the Eleventh Plan and Rs 257.12 crore in the Twelfth Plan.
Electrification of Thiruvananthapuram to Shoranur and Shoranur to Chennai has already been done and work is in progress in the Thiruvananthapuram -Kanyakumari section. Electrification of the Shoranur- Mangalore-Penambur section would ensure seamless operation in the 736km stretch of Penambur-Mangalore-Kanyakumari section and the 591km- long Chennai- Penambur section. Connecting the two major ports in the south, namely Chennai and Mangalore would significantly enhance major traffic moved on this section like food grains, coal, hardware, fertilizers, coir, paper, timber, cement, rubber, petroleum products and mineral ores. The major impact of the NH 7 project lies in reducing the time and cost of travel of traffic, particularly heavy traffic running between Devanahalli and Hebbal and to Bengaluru International Airport.
