PALAKKAD: The much-anticipated Kanjikode coach factory project that the Railways dropped in 2018 has become nothing but a reason for blame games for politicians. The land acquired for the project has virtually turned into a forest, with wild elephants straying into it.
The foundation stone for the project was laid at the Fort Maidan on February 21, 2o11, by then Union Minister of Railways Dinesh Trivedi during the UPA regime. The Railways had also allotted Rs 32.44 crore for the project which was to be implemented in 2012 at Rs 550 crore as a public private partnership (PPP) model. It had also constructed a compound wall by spending Rs 7 crore. But the project failed to pick up momentum for which the CPM and the Congress blamed the BJP for not showing enough interest.
Recently, in the background of the visit of Union ministers to Kerala, especially External Affairs Minister Jaishankar to Thiruvananthapuram, CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said the Centre is trying to blame the state government on development issues while it has no interest in implementing the coach factory.
When MP V K Sreekandan visited Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in New Delhi last month, he demanded that the coach factory be implemented. However, the minister replied that the country has enough manufacturing units for coaches and it does not propose to set one up in Kanjikode. Subsequently, the MP demanded that at least an ancillary manufacturing unit of the Railways be built. But that too fell on deaf ears. “The Centre does not seem to be interested in the project because it does not fetch it any political dividends. The state government too is not pressurising the Centre enough,” said Sreekandan.
However, the recent developments belie the real intentions of the Centre.
Even as the Centre cited having a sufficient number of coach factories in the country as a reason to reject the Kanjikode project, Swiss railway rolling stock manufacturer Stadler Rail has entered into a joint venture with Hyderabad-based Medha Servo Drives Private Limited for setting up a rail coach factory in Telangana at an outlay of Rs 1,000 crore in May.
On Wrong track
Rs 32.44 cr Allotted by Railways for the project
Rs 550 cr Implementation cost of the project in 2012
Planned to be constucted on public private partnership mode
Rs 7 cr: Money spent on constructing a compound wall