NEW DELHI: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday accused the Centre of nursing a bias against his state after the Union railway ministry shifted a proposed rail coach factory out of Kerala’s Palakkad to Haryana.
Accompanying the protesting Kerala MPs outside the Rail Bhavan, he said, “Various Central governments have been cheating Kerala. A rail factory was promised 36 years ago. That was shifted out. Now this.”
A rail coach factory was promised to the state in the 1980s but the project was later shifted to Punjab’s Kapurthala.
Again, a coach factory was announced in the 2008 railway budget and the Kerala government acquired 239 acres for the project.
In 2012, the then minister for railways, Dinesh Trivedi, laid the foundation stone for the project. The project was allocated `43 crore for land acquisition and token allocations of Rs 1.6 crore each were made in 2012 and 2013.
Meanwhile, sources said Vijayan had been denied permission to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi at least four times.
The latest denials came on June 16 and 21 when permission was sought for an all-party delegation led by him.