Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) general secretary C.T. Ravi has said the Central leadership of the party will solidly back its State unit’s campaign against the SilverLine semi-high-speed railway project.
Addressing a news conference here on Friday, Mr. Ravi said the SilverLine project linking Thiruvananthapuram to Kasraagod was unlikely to get approval from the Centre at this stage. The project was technically and financially unviable. Besides, it was not environmental-friendly for Kerala, he said.
The BJP, he said, was not putting hurdles in the State government’s agenda of development. However, projects should be conceived in a people-friendly manner instead of causing great and irreparable damage. The SilverLine project was more destructive than constructive, Mr. Ravi alleged.
Replying to questions on Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan calling on Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi to discuss the SilverLine project, Mr. Ravi said the cordial meeting could hardly be construed as the Centre granting approval to the contentious project. Already Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw had stated that the project was complicated and that the Centre would take an appropriate decision only after careful deliberations, Mr. Ravi said.
He said the State government estimated the project cost at ₹64,000 crore. But according to the NITI Aayog, it would cost ₹1.25 lakh crore. “Where can Kerala, which has a public debt of ₹3.2 lakh crore, get so much money? The CPI(M) must understand that Kerala is not China or North Korea,“ he said.
Mr. Ravi said that even the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, a Left-wing organisation, had opposed the project. The government should be prepared to talk to the people affected by the proposed project. The Chief Minister should understand that India was a democratic country and dictatorship had no place here, he added.
