RailEnquiry

The city’s much-needed facelift is likely to suffer as the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led city Corporation is in the thick of a turf war with Congress leader and MP M.K. Raghavan.

Beypore MLA and CPI (M) leader in charge of party affairs in Kozhikode, Elamaram Karim, on Monday, accused Mr. Raghavan of running a “fraud campaign” by smothering the city with “flex board” hoardings claiming the entire credit for pushing development projects in the city.

Mr. Karim dismissed the local MP’s efforts as “hollow spectacles to gain political capital,” calculated to keep the Corporation in the dark. Mr. Raghavan told The Hindu that he was in New Delhi and would react to the statements after properly examining them. Flanked by Mayor A.K. Premajam and A. Pradeep Kumar, MLA, at a press conference called at the CPI (M) district committee office here, Mr. Karim said that things had come to such a stance that the district administration officials tended to breach protocol, approaching the MP instead of the Mayor.

Though the press conference started with Mr. Karim declaring that he was here to talk about the city’s development, and not politics, he went ahead to pick on each and every declaration made by Mr. Raghavan, calling them “unnecessary”. The immediate trigger seems to be the statements made by Mr. Raghavan on August 1 after a meeting with Railway officials on a plan to develop a “world class railway station” in the city. The MP had revealed plans to implement the project on the lines of the Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL) and the Delhi airport.

But the Mayor said she was neither informed nor invited to the meeting, a grievance she voiced publicly for the second time in the last few days. “How can the development of Kozhikode railway station, a public asset, be the agenda of one MP? Not just the interiors of the station, its vicinity too will have to be developed. How will this be possible without informing the Corporation? Why was such a spectacle organised then…to attract media attention?” Mr. Karim asked.

‘Shilpa Nagaram’

The Corporation did not know that Kozhikode was going to be declared a ‘Shilpa Nagaram,’ the leaders said. “A sculptor came to me seeking info about installing a sculpture at Mananchira Square. I had no idea about the proposal till then. I immediately called a meeting and got a consensus for the installation. This is unfair,” Ms. Premajam said.

On one occasion, the Mayor was invited only after the MP was unavailable for a public function organised by the Khadi Board, Mr. Karim pitched in. He wondered how the city’s monorail project, including the alignment plans and location of major stations within the city, could be worked out without the consensus and active participation of the city Corporation.