Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has said that the State government will take immediate steps for developing the Mananchira-Vellimadukunnu road in the city.
He announced this after receiving a mass petition submitted by the Mananchira- Vellimadukunnu action committee demanding that funds be allocated for acquiring the land for converting the road into a four-lane highway.
Mr. Chandy said that the Cabinet had already discussed the project of converting the 8.4-km. road into a four-lane highway. The land required for widening the road would be acquired before April 15, 2015. A sum of Rs.100 crore would be released in the supplementary Budget in February and the remaining amount, in the fresh Budget in March.
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A State-level Empowered Committee, chaired by the Chief Secretary, would take a final decision on the recommendations of the district-level purchase committee on the land value. The District Collector was asked to speed up the process of acquiring government land as soon as possible.
The action committee members led by working president Mathew Kattikana and general secretary M.P. Vasudevan met the Chief Minister at the guest house here on Saturday. M.K. Raghavan, MP; District Collector C.A. Latha; the former Mayor C.J. Robin; anti-corruption activist K.P. Vijayakumar, and District Congress Committee president K.C. Abu were present.
As many as 3,033 people have signed a petition seeking the intervention of the State for widening the road. Historian M.G.S. Narayanan; writers M.T. Vasudevan Nair, P. Valsala, U.K. Kumaran, and P.K. Gopi; film-maker V.M. Vinu, Bishop Varghese Chakkalakal, Swami Nityananda, and Imam V. Abdul Ghani Faisi are among the signatories.
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Meanwhile, committee president Dr. Narayanan announced that the proposed Secretariat march on March 18 had been cancelled following an assurance given by the Chief Minister.
The committee has demanded that the government release the funds before the expiry of the draft notification for acquiring land for the project in April 2015. An estimated Rs.450 crore is required for land acquisition.