Hope still alive for Thripunithura bypass project

MoRTH to study feasibility of Thripunithura bypass after 30-year delay, bringing hope to motorists and landowners.

Hope has come alive for motorists caught in traffic snarls in and around Thripunithura town and for the 286 landowners through whose plots the Thripunithura bypass was to be built over three decades ago, with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) deciding to entrust a board member of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) with the task of studying the feasibility of the corridor.

The development comes in the wake of Francis George, MP, taking up the “inordinate delay” in implementing the project and the plight of people whose lands were frozen for the corridor with Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari earlier this week. According to the initial plan, the Public Works department (NH wing) was to construct the corridor that had been mulled to decongest the bottlenecked parts of Thripunithura town, through which people commuted to Idukki and Kottayam districts.

In his memorandum, Mr. George pointed out that the project had not been executed, although works began when V.P. Singh was the Prime Minister, well over 30 years ago.

“The Union Minister said that steps would be taken to help realise the road project. I apprised him of the need to ready the corridor to decongest Thripunithura and also because the 286 landowners in the Mattakuzhi-Thiruvankulam railway corridor are unable to construct buildings, sell their land, or take loan with their land as security,” Mr. George said.

He also mentioned two greenfield national highway corridors whose alignments passed a stone’s throw away from the alignment that was mulled for the Thripunithura bypass and suggested that a spur road be developed from either of them to act as a bypass corridor.

After being flooded with a flurry of demands from landowners, residents’ associations, NGOs, and others, the PWD had in December 2023 insisted that either the NHAI or the MoRTH build a two-lane, standalone corridor through the alignment of the Thripunithura bypass. For this, the PWD cited how the onus was on MoRTH since it had initiated the bypass project (following which the PWD [NH wing] began the land acquisition process). It also referred to the revised cost estimate for land acquisition being returned unapproved by MoRTH, citing ‘exorbitant increase’ from what had been the sanctioned estimate over 30 years ago.

This resulted in only 4.40 hectares of the total 16 hectares being acquired in phase-one of the Thripunithura bypass project, covering a 3.75-km stretch in the Mattakuzhi-Thiruvankulam railway corridor, PWD sources said.