Chennai: After having put up the most vigorous and resolute defence of the eight-lane Salem-Chennai Expressway project, both inside and outside the Assembly in recent months, the Chief Minister and AIADMK's co-coordinator Edappadi K Palaniswami appears to have suddenly done a 360 degree turn now.
While launching the AIADMK-BJP-PMK-DMDK alliance's campaign for the April 18 Lok Sabha polls from Karumanthurai village near Salem couple of days back, Mr. Palaniswami, to reporters queries on the party's stand on projects that destroy the livelihood of farmers like methane gas extraction in the Cauvery delta and the Salem-Chennai Expressway, said, "We will not implement anti-farmer projects."
This reaction came close on the heels of his arch rival and DMK president M K Stalin's assertion during his election campaign that once back in power, the DMK will scrap this controversial highway project, which farmers of Salem, Tiruvannamalai and Vellore districts feared would spell total livelihood loss for them as valuable agricultural land would be "gobbled up" by the NHAI. And the project was touted as part of the NDA's 'Bharat Mala' project of giant highways.
Was it political compulsion when the heat and dust of a crucial poll campaign had just begun in Tamil Nadu? More so, as stakes are higher for the AIADMK with bye-elections to 18 Assembly seats being held simultaneously, in a mini-referendum of the Edappadi Palaniswami and O. Pannerselvam-led AIADMK government?
The Salem-Chennai Expressway project, a new 277.30 km-long super-way, was billed as a major infrastructure project that will cut the distance between Salem and Chennai by 60 km, reduce travelling time by half and even save considerable fuel, though two national highways already connect the two cities in the state. The project, to cost about `10,000 crore also involved clearing forest areas to the extent of 120 hectares, as per NHAI, along the proposed road alignment.
Right from day one, farmers in Salem district opposed the project, stating that farmers' who had earlier given up their lands for widening the Salem-Chennai NH via Ulundurpet, were yet to get the compensation in full. There is also another highway via Krishnagiri and so why another Expressway, was a question raised by the PMK even then, though it is now part of the AIADMK-led alliance for the LS polls. The PMK had moved the Madras High court to stop the land acquisition process, notwithstanding the fact that land surveys had already commenced.
While hundreds of farmers courted arrest, protesting against the Expressway, the most stoic, virulent defence of the project came from Mr. Palaniswami. Even as late as December 16, 2018, when he was in Salem home turf, he stunned one and all by offering "to walk the last mile to convince each and everyone who will be affected by the project on the need for implementing it." He had then said that 89 per cent of the affected people have "accepted" the project, hoping that even the 11 per cent dissenters would be convinced.
Mr. Palaniswami had packed his armoury with a clutch of arguments in favour of the project: from land compensation under the new Land Acquisition Law having been considerably enhanced to a minimum of `20 lakh per hectare, separate compensation for houses and even coconut and other trees that may be felled, to the need for such highways to "attract more industrial investments that brought better living standards to the people."
All these developments were going on, notwithstanding allegations that the project was to possibly give the Jindal Steels group access to a separate highway, in the backdrop of an iron ore mining project they were keen in the Kajamalai hills near Salem, and their more recent interest to pick up strategic stake in the Salem Steel plant, which the BJP-led Central government wants to disinvest from.
Whether it is to blunt the criticisms of DMK chief Mr. Stalin over this project or to appease the PMK, the AIADMK's new ally, Mr Palaniswami's move, may, on the face of it, seem political pragmatics to cut AIADMK's losses in the western belt. But what surprises political observers is the alacrity with which he has done this about-turn.
