BJP leader O. Rajagopal said on Wednesday that the conference convened by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy to discuss railway development needs of the State with Union Minister of Railways Dinesh Trivedi had failed to address the basic long term developmental needs of the State.
Addressing a press conference here, the BJP leader said that proposals like posting of an executive officer to look after the railway development of the State would be inadequate. What was needed was a coastal railway zone based in Kerala which was not seriously considered by the conference.
Mr. Rajagopal said that the much trumpeted railway coach factory at Palakkad was not going to materialise in a decade, since the Railways priorities were in developing a coach factory in UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s constituency Raebareli. Details like ownership pattern of the Palakkad factory remained undecided while every other factory was in the public sector.
The new express train proposed from Nilambur to Thiruvananthapuram was nothing but a link train to be connected to Amritha Express at Shornur. The proposal to use the coaches of the Amritha Express to run another service from Palakkad to Mangalore could often upset scheduled departures.
He noted that no attention had been paid to the proposal to have a suburban railway headquarters in Kochi using available land and the Nilambur-Nanchencode lane. The Nanchencode lane would help to reduce the travel time between Kochi and Mysore by six hours.
