Kozhikode, Friday 03 July 2009: People of north Kerala are hopeful of receiving fair consideration in the Union railway budget this time, especially as E. Ahamed is the Union Minister of State for Railways.

Union Minister for Railways Mamta Banerjee will present the full railway budget for 2009-2010 in Parliament today. Already, the Ministry has received a plethora of memorandums from various organisations after Ahamed assumed charge.

The railways authorities have responded by initiating measures to mitigate the woes of the passengers. However, the major demands of the commuters have not been met. Decisions such as running the Amrita Express as a shuttle service between Palakkad and Kozhikode from October and earmarking 75 per cent of berths exclusively for end-to-end passengers on four important trains connecting Chennai and Mangalore have been welcomed.

E. Ahamed had also announced that two important stations in north Kerala — Kozhikode and Tirur — would be developed into model stations. However, some organisations, including the Federation of North Kerala Chambers of Commerce and Industry, have sought more concrete steps such as upgrading the Shoranur junction railway station to a triangular central junction so as to ease congestion at the station.

The triangular central junction project, if implemented, would solve the problems of passengers travelling towards different directions, Thiruvananthapuram, Mangalore and Chennai, said M. Muzammil, chairman of the federation. Increasing the number of coaches on day trains, extending the routes of existing trains and new services have been the long-pending demand of the people travelling in the Shoranur-Kasaragod sector.

The promises of a suburban railway between Kannur and Tirur, extension of the Thiruvananthapuram-Ernakulam and Madgaon-Mumbai Jana Shatabdi Express and the Venad Express up to Kozhikode are yet to be fulfilled.

There is no daily train from north Kerala to the State capital between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. A few weekly trains run during these hours, but many of them do not stick to the scheduled time.

Daily commuters face hardship on account of shortage of coaches on trains that run between Kannur and Thrissur. Starting push-pull trains on the Coimbatore-Mangalore and Thrissur-Mangalore routes during daytime would benefit Malabar. The electrification and completion of doubling works of the Shoranur-Mangalore line and laying of new lines in the region are other aspects.

New rail lines between Thalassery-Mysore; Nanjangud-Nilambur and Tanur-Guruvayur are also on the priority list.

(News Agency)