Plea to Railways on Ezhukone station

In a letter to Southern Railway general manager Vashishta Johri on Tuesday, Kodikunnil Suresh, MP, has demanded the dropping of moves by the Railways to downgrade the Ezhukone railway station as a halt station.

The station in the Kollam-Punalur sector comes under the Madurai Division of the Railways.

Mr. Suresh said that the moves in this connection are being made on grounds that the railway station was not making profits. But this is a ruse to withdraw railway personnel from stations performing well and hand it over to the private sector, he alleged. Ticket sales from such downgraded stations will be entrusted to private companies.

He said that the move comes at a time when he had requested the Railways to upgrade Ezhukone as a crossing station.

Ezhukone comes between Kundara and Kottarakara stations, a distance of 15 km, and between that distance a crossing station is required.

Ezhukone is the most ideal for that, he said. With trains like the Punalur-Guruvayur, the Punalur-Madurai and the Punalur-Kanyakumari halting at Ezhukone, the passenger strength from that station is steadily increasing, Mr. Suresh added in the letter.