Kalpetta: While environmental concerns are being raised against the Anakkampoyil-Kalladi-Meppadi twin-tunnel road project, the demand for developing the Chippilithode-Maruthilavu-Lakkidy road as an alternative to the Thamarassery ghat road is gaining momentum.

The environmentalists had pointed out that the tunnel project is being executed in one of the most Ecologically Fragile Land in the Western Ghats region which would further abet the landslides that recur in the area. The project ends at Kalladi near Mundakkai, where a landslide had claimed more than 200 lives on July 30. Dileep Buildcon Limited, a Hyderabad-based infrastructure development recently won the bid for the project at a cost of Rs 1,341 crore. The estimated cost of the 14 km long Chippilithode-Lakkidy is Rs 120 crore.

Kozhikode-based Malabar Development Council chairman C E Chakkunni said that the alternative road project should have been executed much earlier. The UDF government allocated Rs 5 crore for the initial work of the project in the 2013-2014 budget. In the proposed route the distance from the national highway (NH 766) at Chippilithode to Maruthilavu, the border of Kozhikode district, was only 5.4 km and the rest of the road is through the reserve forest for 3.34 km.

In the initial project report, of the total 14.44 km distance, 8.94 km was forest land including 2.6 km Ecologically Fragile Land. The total land necessary for the project to be taken over from the forest department was 16.85 hectares. Moves were also afoot to get a clearance from the regional office of the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Forests, Bengaluru.

Recently, the action council for the proposed Chippilithode-Marutilavu-Lakkidi road project convened a meeting in which Thamarassery Bishop Remigiose Inchananiyil, Thiruvambadi MLA Linto Joseph and officials of the National Highway Authority of India participated. Linto Joseph MLA said that though the procedures to get the clearance for the tunnel road project are underway, parallel moves are also on to implement the Chippilithode-Lakkidy Ghat Road by-pass project. “We have not set the project aside, but there was some delay as the entire effort was focused on the tunnel road project," he said.