Thiruvananthapuram: Revenue officials deployed to plant the yellow stones have been recalled but Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told the Assembly on Thursday that the Rs 64,000 crore Semi-High Speed Rail (K-Rail) has not been shelved.
"It is not a kind of project that can ever be shelved. We cannot even think of abandoning the project," the Chief Minister said while responding to an adjournment motion moved by Congress MLA Roji M John. "At the same time, we have to be realistic. We will have to wait for the Centre to give its approval," he said.
The Chief Minister was also optimistic about the Centre's approval. "There are many such projects taking place in various parts of the country. The approval, therefore, will anyway be granted. And when that happens, these officers we have now recalled will be brought back," he said.
Opposition Leader V D Satheesan made the UDF's intent clear. "No one knows better than the Chief Minister that this project will not take off. But even if you manage to secure sanction from the Centre, the UDF will not let this project happen," Satheesan said.
Since the project is officially still on, the Chief Minister refused to withdraw the hundreds of cases taken against anti-rail protesters. The Opposition Leader called for leniency. "Have mercy. You have declared that you won't. And I know you are adamant. But please show mercy," he said. "They were arrested not for blocking roads or destroying public property but for preventing officials and police from entering their lands and homes," Satheesan said.
The Chief Minister also turned down the Opposition demand to withdraw official notifications designating the boundary lines of the proposed project across Kerala.
These notifications, issued on August 18 and October 30, 2021, lists the survey numbers of properties that will fall within the project area. Both these notifications together cover 1221 hectares spread over 11 districts in Kerala. The yellow stones were planted on the boundaries of lands that represented these survey numbers.
The Chief Minister summarily dismissed the difficulties land owners can possibly face as a result of the presence of survey stones in their land. "The presence of the boundary markers will not cause any problem. There are no technical or legal hurdles for any kind of transactions related to the land," the Chief Minister said.
Roji John said lands where boundary stones had been planted were as good as dead assets. "Land owners are unable to sell or pledge their land for even emergency requirements like health and education. Banks are unwilling to provide loan citing the prospect of future acquisition," Roji said.
"We have a situation where buyers refuse to purchase even plots that fell outside the proposed project area merely because K-Rail stones were spotted in nearby plots," Roji said.
The Opposition Leader, too, flagged this issue. "Land transactions are not taking place in the entire 1,221 hectares set apart for the project across the length and breadth of India," Satheesan said. He said more than 90 percent of families whose lands have been included within the boundaries of the Silver Line project belonged to the poor and lower middle class.
Satheesan said it is was not just families within the 1,221 hectares who had been affected. "Thousands of acres of lands that fall within the buffer zone of 10 metres on either side of the rail track, which the government would not even acquire, too have been rendered as unwanted assets. These lands have been frozen, and are of no use to families owning them on paper," the Opposition Leader said.
Satheesan said mere verbal assurances that these lands were free of any encumbrances were not enough. "Would any one of us purchase these lands," he asked.
