TIRUCHY: Rebutting Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw’s remarks blaming Tamil Nadu government’s lack of cooperation for the delay in execution of projects, Transport Minister S S Sivasankar on Tuesday accused the union government of being indifferent to the state.
Addressing media persons in Tiruchy, Sivasankar said that Chief Minister MK Stalin had already written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging to accord priority for railway projects in Tamil Nadu.
Calling Vaishnaw’s recent remarks on social media platform X “factually incorrect”, Sivasankar said that over the past five years, administrative sanction had been granted to acquire 148.65 hectares for seven railway projects, and land acquisition is under way. Of the 128.41 hectares required for two major projects, 73.65 hectares have been acquired so far. For 19 key projects, 1,198.02 hectares — about 94% of the required 1,273.05 hectares — have already been handed over to the Railways, he told.
Only `739.31 crore, however, was allocated for railway projects in Tamil Nadu during the period, slowing land acquisition. While the state government has approved acquisition of 2,500.61 hectares for central railway projects, funds for acquiring 931.52 hectares are yet to be released by the railway, he added.
A total of Rs 298.78 crore is also pending release towards the Thiruvananthapuram-Kanniyakumari section project, the minister said. Further, the Tamil Nadu government had not sought dropping of the project for the Thoothukudi-Madurai (via Aruppukottai) line, Sivasankar said. Mentioning an allocation of railway projects worth Rs 23,926 crore for Maharashtra and Rs 20,012 crore for Uttar Pradesh, Minister Sivasankar pointed out that Tamil Nadu, on the other hand, received only Rs 7,600 crore for the same in the Union Budget.
Earlier, the minister and DMK leader called out AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami, who “earlier questioned the feasibility of the DMK’s schemes”, for replicating the initiatives in his party’s election manifesto.