Doubling and electrification of the 86.56-km Thiruvananthapuram Central-Nagercoil Junction-Kanyakumari railway line running through Kerala and Tamil Nadu will commence on Tuesday after Union Minister of State for Railways Rajen Gohain lays the foundation stone for the ₹1,431.90-crore project.
Work on the bridges in the 5.5-km Nagercoil-Kanyakumari section will commence on Tuesday itself, for which the works were awarded to two contractors.
“As no land acquisition is needed on the stretch, the doubling work will begin after the foundation stone is laid, keeping 2022 as the deadline for commissioning by Railways,” a top construction official told The Hindu .
The work is being executed under the supervision of the Chief Administrative Officer (Construction), Ernakulam. Chennai-based Copco Engineering Pvt Ltd has bagged the bid for the construction of bridges and Erode-based R.S. Developers Pvt Ltd, the earthwork.
42 hectares of land
The project has 15 stations, 394 bridges, 35 level crossings and five tunnels, and for this as much as 42 hectares of land is to be acquired. Of these, 17 hectares is in Kerala and the remaining is in Tamil Nadu.
The 47-km Eraniel-Thiruvananthapuram Central stretch poses a problem, as land acquisition is mainly confined to this corridor spread over the two States. Bids for the works can be floated only after the land acquisition is completed by the two States. The Railways had already submitted the details of the alignment of the second line to be laid to the State and the district administration, the official said.
State’s assurance
The State government promised to speed up land acquisition for the project at a high-level meeting convened by K.J. Alphons, Union Minister for Tourism and IT, and attended by Ajit Pandit, additional member, Works, Railway Board, last week in Kochi.
The Union Minister, during the current visit, will also inaugurate the doubling of the 160-km stretch from Madurai Junction to Thoothukudi and the 102-km line from Vanchi Maniyachi to Nagercoil Junction and some passenger amenities, at a function to be held at Nagercoil Junction.
