
CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government, in a statement, has clarified that it never indicated in any form that it did not want the Madurai-Thoothukudi (via Aruppukottai) railway line project. This comes a day after Union Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw stated in Chennai that the project has been shelved as the state government did not want it.
“The Tamil Nadu Government had neither in writing nor verbally, sought for the project to be withdrawn. On the contrary, it has been consistently urging the implementation of the project,” the statement by Transport Minister S S Sivasankar, said.
Questioning why the union railway minister would make statements contradictory to the state’s stand, it stated that this shows the discriminatory nature of the BJP-led centre towards Tamil Nadu.
The government said that in a reply sent by the Southern Railway’s deputy chief engineer to an additional secretary of the state’s transport department in December 2024 regarding the status of various railway projects, the official said that while the 18-km stretch from Milavittan to Madurai was completed in March 2022, the Southern Railway has proposed the “freezing” of the rest of the 143.5-km-long Madurai-Thoothukudi line due to “low freight prospects”.
Based on the assessment and request thereof by the railways, the process of land acquisition for the estimated 926 hectares was taken up in two phases by the district collectors of Madurai, Virudhunagar and Thoothukudi to be handed over to the railways. For this, the state government, by way of three GOs issued on 24-1-2022, 25-4-2023 and 22-09-2023, accorded administrative sanction, the statement said.
It added that there has been no response from Southern Railway so far, to the letters from the collectors of these three districts (written on 9-8-2024, 4-9-2024 and 27-9-2024) seeking allotment of funds.
The chief minister, on August 19, 2024, also wrote to the union railway minister seeking allocation of funds for projects including the Madurai-Thoothukudi (via Aruppukottai) railway line project.
Earlier in the day, the DMK’s IT wing also accused the union minister of ‘blatantly lying’ in a series of posts on social media platform ‘X’. The party’s IT wing released some documents to refute Vaishnaw’s remarks and assert that the project was shelved by the union government for “frivolous” reasons despite the state government’s repeated pleas for expeditious implementation of the project.
“Honourable Railway Minister is either lying or is being lied to,” it said, and urged the minister to issue a correction if his comment on Friday was a “slip of the tongue”. “We need funds, not lies,” it added.
The `2,054-crore worth project, announced in 2011-12, has been under construction since 2016. TNIE had reported based on RTI responses about how the land acquisition unit set up by the state government in Madurai for the project was disbanded on January 1. On Friday, in response to a question by TNIE, Vaishnaw said, “The Tamil Nadu government has said they do not want this project,” but did not elaborate further.