Accusing the State government of indulging in fraudulent data fudging, Leader of the Opposition V. D. Satheesan has alleged large-scale corruption in the SilverLine project.
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“The Chief Minister keeps repeating untrue statements without answering any of the crucial questions raised by the Opposition,” he said here on Thursday.
Mr. Satheesan said the government was going ahead without conducting any survey or geological study or completing the alignment. “There is no accurate data about the estimate or completion cost. It is not possible to complete the project with an estimated cost of ₹64,000 crore. NITI Aayog had calculated the cost as ₹1.33 lakh crore in 2018 and it has estimated the cost as ₹1.6 lakh crore now. When the project completes in five to 10 years, the cost will definitely shoot up above ₹2 lakh crore,” he said.
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Pointing out the economic and social costs of the project, Mr. Satheesan said the victims of the Kerala Rail Development Corporation Limited (K-Rail) project would include not just landowners, but the entire population of Kerala.
“Standard gauge that has become scrap in Japan will be shipped to Kerala as part of the project. There is large-scale corruption in this.” He said the project would be disastrous to the environmentally fragile State.
“As per the project report, 328 km will need embankment and this will harm several waterbodies. Such a project cannot be implemented without conducting subsoil tests and assessing its ecological impact,” he said.