Thammanam-Pullepady road development in stalemate yet again

Residents of Kochi, Kerala, have been waiting 35 years for the Thammanam-Pullepady road to be widened and extended to Padma Junction and Chakkaraparambu. Inordinate delay in handing over the stretch to the PWD and finalising the road's alignment has resulted in a dead end. Residents have petitioned the Minister for Public Works to take swift action to revive the project, which would decongest the city and fulfil their collective dream.

The long-overdue development of Thammanam-Pullepady road as a four-lane stretch appears to have hit a dead end owing to inordinate delay in handing over the stretch to the Public Works department (PWD) and finalising the road’s alignment.

This has in turn resulted in delay in beginning land acquisition to widen the stretch and also its extension to Padma Junction on M.G. Road and Chakkaraparambu on the Edappally-Aroor NH bypass. Once ready, the 3.60-km road is expected to augment the much-needed east-west connectivity in the city by opening up a third arterial corridor that will link the NH bypass with M.G. Road. The other two corridors are S.A. Road and Banerjee Road which are chock-a-block with vehicles and pedestrians who have to jostle for space amid haphazardly parked vehicles and bottlenecked junctions.

Expressing dismay at the delay in handing over the stretch to the PWD and readying its alignment 35 years after the project was mooted and vast many people surrendered land free of cost, residents under the banner of Thammanam-Pullepady Road Vikasana Samithi sought the State government’s attention to the plight of scores of landowners who were unable to construct houses or shops in their land.

“This was because they were being denied permission and issued stop memos, citing that the road’s alignment was yet to be finalised. There are innumerable such half-constructed buildings on the stretch whose plans were passed but whose work had to be halted due to issuing of stop memos. Boundary stones laid from time to time and many that have been bundled on the side at many places are stark reminders of the plight of landowners and the road,” said P.S. Jayasankar, one of the landowners who had given written consent to surrender his plot for the road as early as in 2017.

Mayor M. Anilkumar, who had convened a review meeting on the corridor earlier this month, said the Local Self-Government department (LSGD) had handed over the stretch to the Revenue department, which in turn ought to hand it over to the PWD. This process would hopefully be done in a month. “The Kochi Corporation has been trying its best to clear the way to widen and extend the critical corridor that would considerably decongest the city,” he added.

Sources in the Kerala Road Fund Board (KRFB) to which the PWD had entrusted the work to widen and extend the road, said the PWD’s design wing was yet to do a topographic survey. This would be followed by zeroing in on an alignment that would be in sync with the one that Kochi Corporation had readied. Laying of boundary stones and land acquisition would follow.

The alleged stalemate over the road’s development continues even after residents petitioned Minister for Public Works P.A. Mohamed Riyas over a month ago, demanding speeding up of the project that was entangled in red tape. “It is disheartening to witness bureaucratic disputes among government departments that are responsible for completing the road project. We urge you to take swift action to revive the dormant project. It represents the collective dream of residents who have been putting up with traffic chaos on the bottlenecked corridor,” they said in the petition.