Putting the future of the Sabari rail project off the track once again, the Union Railway Ministry has asked the State to submit its unconditional consent for sharing the cost of the project.
The Railways’ insistence on executing the project under a cost-sharing agreement has left the project in limbo for a long time. However, the project received momentum recently, with the Centre asking Kerala to ink a tripartite agreement involving the State government, Ministry of Railways, and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to take the project forward.
The agreement will ensure that the RBI will pay the share of Kerala to the Ministry of Railways if the State fails to pay its share of the project cost on time and deduct the amount from the Central share of assistance to Kerala for various schemes.
Though the State initially toyed with the idea of signing the agreement, it later retracted and insisted that the State will shoulder 50% of the revised estimate for the Sabari rail project only if the debt incurred by the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board by financing the project will be fully exempted from the State’s borrowing limit.
In reply to a question about the future of the project in Parliament, Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw made it clear that the State government has been requested by the Railways to submit unconditional consent for sharing the cost to take forward the project.
The Angamali-Sabarimala (via Erumeli) project sanctioned in 1997-98 is estimated to cost ₹3,801 crore as per the revised update submitted to the Government of Kerala in December 2023, and the State will bear 50% of the cost of the project as per the understanding between the State and Centre governments.
Published – April 02, 2025 08:22 pm IST