Kerala Public Works Minister Mons Joseph, while addressing a meet on the need for an expressway in the state recently, remarked that Kerala required a high-speed road corridor from Kasaragod in the north to Thiruvananthapuram in the south.
During the last United Democratic Front government, the proposal for a high-speed highway was a subject of an intense row. The minister said that the government had studied the report for a 520-km highway, prepared during the last government, but it had to form a consensus on the project.
Kerala is lagging behind other states in road development. The main reasons are the unavailability of land and population density. The delay in land acquisition is also creating hurdles in road projects.
The Rs 1.5-billion city development project in capital city Thiruvananthapuram got bogged down as land could not be acquired on time. Punj Lloyd, which was entrusted with the project, stopped work midway because of the delay in acquisition. Now the government has completed 85 per cent of the land acquisition and the company has agreed to restart the work. The project will be completed in 18 months.