Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will hold talks with his Karnataka counterpart Basavaraj Bommai on Sunday to see if the proposed SilverLine rail corridor project could be extended past the state's borders into Mangaluru. The meeting between the two is slated for 9:30 am.
The idea for such an extension was first floated ahead of the Southern Zone Council Meet earlier this month in which both Vijayan and Bommai had taken part.
The SilverLine project, envisaged to connect both ends of Kerala, has been engulfed in a storm of controversies since the idea was first tabled.
While the Congress-led Opposition in Kerala is of the opinion that going ahead with the project would throw the state into a financial crunch, the Centre believes that there are more viable options than a rail-corridor project. The proposed 530-km stretch is also likely to see thousands displaced.
Experts are viewing Vijayan's plans to now extend SilverLine into Karnataka as a political move to win the Centre's nod for the project by disguising it as an inter-state development plan rather than one confined to Kerala's borders.
It is learned that Karnataka officials have sought the technical details of SilverLine.
Karnataka is ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, also the ruling political party in India. Meanwhile, Kerala is led by the Left-front coalition helmed by the Communist Party of India Marxist.
Discussions will also be held on the development of Thalassery-Mysuru and Nilambur-Nanjangud routes.
Meanwhile, interest for a similar rail-corridor project is also brewing in Kerala's other neighbouring state - Tamil Nadu.
Recently, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin had also urged the Centre to create a high-speed rail corridor connecting locations in the state to major cities outsides its borders.
SilverLine is developed by K-Rail, a joint venture of the Kerala government and the Railway Ministry.
