Will consider high-speed rail if State interested, says Union Minister

As the political slugfest around rail development continues, Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Friday said in the Rajya Sabha that the SilverLine semi-high-speed rail project proposed by Kerala was not feasible as it had a major environmental impact. The Minister, who criticised the State for its non-cooperation in rail development works, said the Centre was ready to consider the high-speed rail project if the State was interested.

In the case of the Sabari rail project, the Union Minister said the Kerala Chief Minister and the State government had been approached several times regarding the Angamaly–Sabarimala railway line. After persistent persuasion, the Chief Minister initiated the land acquisition process, possibly because of the upcoming elections, he said. He expressed hope that the acquisition would continue beyond the elections.

In the meantime, technocrat E. Sreedharan said in a statement that the State government’s move to go ahead with the Regional Rail Transit System (RRTS) was either out of ignorance or with the sole intention to derail the proposed high-speed rail in Kerala. The concept of RRTS was brought in by the Government of India for the first time as part of the New Metro Rail Policy, 2017. Regional rail catered to passenger services within a larger urban agglomerate or metropolitan area, connecting the outskirts to the centre of the city.

The services have a greater number of halts at smaller distances. RRTS are common in large metropolitan cities and help in decongesting the city centre by providing safe and speedy access to the city centre. In short, it is nothing but a mass rapid transit system. In addition, RRTS is not an accepted railway system, and it cannot be planned and executed under the ‘Railway Act’. It is a transit mode under the mass rapid transit system to be designed and constructed under the “Metro Act”. Therefore, it does not come under Indian Railways but under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. Against this background, how can the Kerala government plan a long railway line from Thiruvananthapuram to Kasaragod terming it as RRTS, he asked.

Last week, taking a dig at Mr. Sreedharan, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said at a public function that he, along with K.V.Thomas, special representative of Kerala in New Delhi, had met the Union Railway Minister seeking a high-speed-rail project for the State as advised by Mr. Sreedharan. However, the State had not received any reply from the Centre regarding the project to date. It was against the backdrop of the continued neglect by the Centre that the State decided to move ahead with the RRTS project.