29th Dec 2012, Kozhikkode: Protest against proposed project between Thiruvananthapuram and Udupi Nearly 30 placard-carrying activists barged into an ongoing seminar and stopped it for about 30 minutes on Wednesday evening, protesting against the proposed corridor between Thiruvananthapuram and Udupi in Karnataka. The seminar was being organised by Association of Engineers Kerala at the conference hall of the Public Works Department Complex at Mananchira. Entry of activists The entry of the activists was shortly after V. Balakrishnan, chairman of the seminar committee, welcomed the gathering and introduced the main speaker, G. Radhakrishnan Nair, Chief Engineer, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, Thiruvananthapuram. The sloganeering continued in front of the podium for a few minutes after which the leader of the self-styled Athivega Rail Prathiroda Committee, Manoj Kumar Cheekapetta, explained the reason for the protest. “More than 65,000 families will be displaced on account of the project. The whole project is prepared in secrecy. There is no transparency in the ongoing deals, he said. He said the State government wanted to hastily implement the project that would do no good to the common man. The Railways already had the capacity to run trains at 200 km per hour. Some of the trains ran at a speed of 150 kmph. The government had mooted the project when doubling and electrification of railways in the State remained incomplete, he said. However, one of the speakers on the dais, U. Venugopalan, executive engineer, DMRC, Kozhikode, clarified that the seminar was organised by Association of Engineers Kerala, whose 3,000-odd members were engineers attached to the PWD, Irrigation and Local Self Government Bodies. “We are concerned with your apprehensions. But this seminar is not for implementing the project. A detailed project report has not been submitted to the government. Organising such seminars is to bring transparency to the project,” he said. Mr. Radhakrishnan Nair, who later spoke, said people were not prepared to listen or understand what the project was all about. Even elected representatives were saying they had not heard about the project. The proposal for a Thiruvananthapuram–Mangalore high-speed passenger corridor was mooted by V.S. Achuthanandan government. An all-party meeting had also been held in this regard then. Now the DMRC had been asked to conduct a study and give a detailed project report. The surveys, being carried out and markings made at sites, did not mean that the government would acquire the land for the project, Mr. Radhakrishnan said. Absent Incidentally the protesters were absent during the presentation of the project. A few engineers sought clarifications on the technical aspects. (Courtesy : The Original news appeared in "The Hindu" Daily Dated 29/11/12)