A proposal by the Ministry of Railways to bifurcate and disband the Palakkad division is likely to meet with stiff resistance in north Kerala.
It is learnt that officials have a plan to bifurcate the Mangaluru section to carve out a new division in Karnataka. Several organisations are apprehensive that the proposal, which has been kept under wraps for now, will cause hardships to commuters in Malabar.
“The proposal is similar to that for the creation of the Salem division more than a decade ago,” A.V. Anoop, chairman, Confederation of All India Rail Users Associations, said on Thursday.
The Palakkad division under the Southern Railway had a route length of 1,247 km till 1979.
Later, the Shoranur-Cochin Terminal Harbour Terminus section was handed over to the Thiruvananthapuram division when it was formed. Thus the track route under its jurisdiction was reduced to 1,132 km.
At present, the Palakkad division has a route length of 577 km after the formation of the Salem division in 2007. Of this, 473.87 km is in Kerala, 64.93 km in Tamil Nadu, and 38.94 km in Karnataka.
Passenger safety
Dr. Anoop, a Chennai-based industrialist, film producer, and social worker, who was in Kozhikode to participate in a seminar, said the Railway authorities should devise concrete plans for the safety of passengers during floods.
Besides, they should conduct a study on flooding of railway bridges. Incidentally, the recent floods had disrupted train services in the Mangaluru-Shoranur sector.
Association working president C.E. Chakkunni said elected representatives from neighbouring States, unlike those from Kerala, were united in their demand to get their development needs addressed. Now, the jurisdiction of the Palakkad division is from Podanur via Shoranur to Mangaluru.
“If the Managluru section is cut off from the Palakkad division, it implies that the Nagercoil section under the Thiruvananthapuram division, which has 625 km of route track, will also go. The Railways stipulate that a division required at least a track route of 600 km,” he added.
According to Mr. Chakkunni, the move was to merge the existing divisions of Palakkad and Thiruvananthapuram to create a new one in Ernakulam, which means Kerala will have only one railway division.
