The Hindu Business Line : Will DMK's comeback end Coimbatore's woes?

The victory for the DMK front in the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections has raised the hope that the Rs 3,030-crore project to meet the basic needs of the city under the National Urban Renewal Mission will get the Centre's nod.

There are also expectations that the Railways would hasten the construction of two railway over bridges for which the Chief Minister, Mr M. Karunanidhi, had laid the foundation during his previous tenure as Chief Minister, and which remain incomplete even after five years.

Despite being the second most industrially developed city in Tamil Nadu and a major source of forex earning, Coimbatore has been getting a raw deal. Its strategic location as a gateway to major tourist destinations and its importance as an industrial hub draws people from across the country and abroad.

In the absence of a full-fledged by-pass road linking all the major roads leaving Coimbatore to Salem, Pollachi, Kochi, Mettupalayam,Tiruchi and Mysore, vehicles are forced to come into the city leading to traffic snarl. The people's misery is compounded by the poor condition of the roads within the city.

The Coimbatore Corporation's plan for the city roads includes laying new roads and improvement of existing roads at a cost of about Rs 95 crore as an immediate initiative. The plan seeks an allocation of Rs 637 crore for laying outer ring roads, construction of railway over bridges, flyovers, bus bays and sub-ways.

The Corporation's mega plan envisages renovation of the existing under ground drainage facilities in the first three zones and extending the under ground drainage to the three other zones and new layouts at a total cost of about Rs 194 crore.

While the share of the Corporation under the National Urban Renewal Mission project has been estimated to be Rs 1,312 crore, the value of works to be executed through the National Highways and highways departments is put at Rs 1436 crore and the value of the schemes to be implemented through the slum clearance board is estimated to be Rs 281 crore.

The problems of a large number of unapproved layouts in the city remain unsolved and the efforts of the governments in the past to regularise them have not been successful mainly because of the stiff rules governing regularisation, particularly those relating to earmarking 10 per cent of the layout area for public purpose as `open space reserve' or payment of part of the cost of the land, if land is not available for open space reserve by the land owners.

The IT park also remains only on paper though the State Government had allotted about 30 acres of land in the Coimbatore medical college campus.

Though in two successive governments at the centre, including the present one, a Minister of State for Railways has been from the State, there has been insufficient financial allocation for doubling the railway track between Irugur and Coimbatore.

But with the possibility of the governments at the Centre and the State working in harmony now, there is hope for better times.

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