Antony pushes for Kerala rail project held up by Mamata

With the railway budget due next week, defence minister A K Antony met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and railway minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday to convey his home state Kerala's apprehensions about the delay in the implementation of the Kanjikode rail coach factory project.

''The prime minister and railway minister said that all the hurdles in launching the project would be cleared as soon as possible,'' Antony told newspersons in New Delhi.

Having been cleared by various agencies, the project only awaits presentation before the cabinet by the ministry of railways. But reportedly, Banerjee is keen to have the project shifted to the abandoned site of Tata's Nano car project at Singur in West Bengal.  

Earlier, RITES - the engineering, consultancy and project management arm of the railways - had inspected the proposed land at Kanjikode and had approved the project. Subsequently, the project was approved by the Railway Board and the Planning Commission.  

The Kerala government had written to the centre in December to say that it was ready to immediately hand over 235 of the 426 acres of land required for the project. The remaining 99 acres were slated to be cleared by February-end. But Banerjee's priorities seem to differ from those of her predecessor in the ministry, Laloo Prasad Yadav, who had cleared the project. 

Banerjee has often made clear to the cabinet her intentions of re-laying the railways' tracks her way. At the meeting of the cabinet committee on economic affairs on Thursday, she was reportedly vociferous in getting 14 projects cleared for her home state of West Bengal, despite financial and environmental objections.