PMK founder S. Ramadoss on Thursday expressed shock over the news of Centre terminating the project to four-lane the Mamallapuram-Puducherry stretch of the East Coast Road, citing lack of response from Tamil Nadu. He was reacting to the report in The Hindu.
In a statement, he pointed out that the State budget for 2022-23 had stated that the bottlenecks in handing over the East Coast Road beyond Mamallapuram to National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) had been addressed and the work of widening the road into a four lanes would begin soon. In such a situation, one cannot understand the motive behind NHAI’s announcement of scrapping the project, he said.
Dr. Ramadoss pointed out that the current ECR stretch was accident prone and the expectation of the people was to make it 4-lane first and later expand it to 6 and 8 lanes. He urged the State government to hold talks with the Centre and NHAI and start the work on the project soon.
