What activists, residents and persons affected by the double-tracking of the South West Railway line have been saying for the past several months, has now been echoed loudly and clearly by a Member of the Legislative Assembly who belongs to the ruling party. Cortalim MLA Alina Saldanha of the Bharatiya Janata Party who is a former Environment Minister has said that the project of laying a second track of the South Western Railway line is to ‘facilitate coal transportation to Karnataka’ and that it will have a serious impact on human lives in the form of coal and noise pollution. She has poitned out that Karnataka has several ports that can handle coal movement and suggested that the government and the railway authorities identify alternative means of transportation.
This isn’t the first time that the MLA has voiced out against the doubling of the track. In the past months since the people affected by the doubling of the railway line have been protesting, Saldanha has stood in solidarity with them on several occasions. In June last she had made a similar demand of seeking an alternative means of tranportation of coal, but this time she has taken her objections to a more serious level. Saldanha has not only asserted that this project is only to benefit Karnataka, but gone on to say that if the double tracking project does see the light of day, then the ‘villagers, owners and the people will become prisoners in their own land suffering due to coal dust pollution, noise pollution and risk to life’.
These are strong statements coming from the MLA, especially since she is a member of the ruling BJP that is pushing the project forward. So is the BJP listening to what its MLA is saying? While Saldanha may have taken the battle against coal to a higher level, she is not the only BJP MLA who has displayed opposition to the doubling of the railway line project. At a meeting of Goencho Ekvot last month on the doubling of the track project, Nuvem MLA Wilfred D’Sa had put in an appearance. These are two MLAs who constituents will be affected by the project and who stand to lose in an electoral battle should the railway line project go ahead. As yet, other BJP MLAs whose constituencies are along the track have not joined the agitation, but it may not take them too long to align with their voters.
Clearly, the battle against the doubling of the track is now not merely an opposition-led movement but also has the support of a section of the MLAs of the ruling party, mainly those who are directly affected by the project. It now depends on how the government reacts to this. According to Saldanha, who along with affected people met Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant on the issue, the Chief Minister has assured to study the ground reality and get back to her and the others who met him. This indicates that the government is ready to relook into the project, but it is also strange that the government and the railway authorities have not studied the matter yet from the people’s perspective.
The reality on the ground is that there are a number of people who do not support the doubling of the railway track that will lead to some of their houses getting destroyed and thousands of trees being cut. Any fresh study of the ‘ground reality’ has to consider the concerns of the people, as otherwise there will be no new perspective to the project, which will then not alter the decision of the government in any manner. The government has to listen to the people before taking the next step in the project.
