THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The 38,863-sq km stretch of land on the southwest coast of India has three international airports and another is coming up soon. And the Kerala state ministers prefer taking flights linking these airports rather than use its rickety roads, according to a written reply by Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan tabled in the state assembly.
Achuthanandan, a vociferous opponent of expressways, himself leads the pack with 76 flights crisscrossing the state followed by Industries Minister Elamaram Kareem (47), Food Minister C. Divakaran (40), Forest Minister Binoy Viswam (39), Revenue Minister K.P. Rajendran (34), Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan (33) and S. Sarma and P.K. Sreemathy (30 each), all prominent members of CPM and CPI, and they have been using the flights to get around the state.
The chief minister also flew to Delhi 33 times but Finance Minister Thomas Isaac surpassed him by flying 43 times to the national capital. Local Self Governments Minister Paloli Mohammed took 42 flights to Delhi followed by Viswam (20).
Though the ministers also went on foreign trips, most of them were sponsored by the Malayalee groups abroad, especially in the Gulf, the chief minister informed the house. They spent only Rs.125,000 altogether for these trips.
The chief minister, who failed to furnish details of the amount of money the exchequer had to cough up for his trip, however, gave details of the cost of the flights opposition leader Oommen Chandy undertook using public money: Rs.385,000. The ministers were being forced to fly within the state because of poor road conditions in the state. It takes at least 20 hours to reach Manjeshwaram, the northern tip of the state, from Parassala, in the south, covering 560km.
The government had to shelve a proposal to build an access-controlled expressway linking both ends with a four-lane road because of resistance from Achuthanadan when he was in the opposition.
Contractors abandoned the Rs.15 billion World Bank-aided Kerala State Transport Project for improving state highways and the Rs.2.2 billion Thiruvananthapuram City Development Project accusing the state government of noncooperation. They resumed work recently after much dilly-dallying.
He had to agree recently to sign ‘the state support agreement’ to upgrade and widen major highways covering 850km at a cost of Rs.50 billion after much persuasion since it involved collection of tolls from the users.
The entire stretch of 850km on three major highways in the state was to be converted into four-lane traffic under the Phase II and III of the National Highway Development Project (NHDP).
Unlike other states, only a 46-km stretch of the national highways in Kerala has width to allow four-lane traffic and some stretches are hardly navigable. The state needs good roads before the commissioning of the international container transshipment terminal (ICTT) being built by the Dubai Port World in Kochi. The work on the remaining stretches covering 664km, including bypasses in Alappuzha and Kollam, is yet to start because of land acquisition problems in many places.
Launched in 1998, the national Highways Authority of India (NHAI) implemented projects worth $71 billion in India as of 2006. They include the 5,846km, Rs.300 billion Golden Quadrilateral connecting the four metros and the North-South and East-West corridors linking the four extreme points of the country, which was to be completed by December 2007 at a cost of Rs.350 billion.
According to the NHDP III rules, modes other than BOT are to be considered only if the capacity of the road is 15,000 PCU (passenger car units) or less. The capacity of the 664km of roads to be converted into four lanes along the Kerala coast, the mainly NH-47 and NH-17, is well above 20,000 PCUs.
The projects that require immediate attention of the state include the Kozhikode and Alappuzha bypasses, construction of a new road from Kuttipuram to Puduponnani, road-over-bridges (ROB) at Edapally and Padnnakadu and boosting stretches on NH-213.
