On Thursday, while demonstrating against the SilverLine project at Vijay Chowk, a brawl broke out between Delhi Police and Kerala Congress MPs.
During a protest march outside the Parliament, all of the Congress MPs from Kerala were halted by Delhi Police, causing chaos. MPs claimed that they were taking out a protest march from Vijay Chowk to Parliament against Silver Line Rail Project when they were stopped by police. They also claimed that the Delhi Police had beaten them up.
The police, according to Kodukunnil Suresh, Dean Kuriakose, and VK Sreekandan, abused them.
According to a police officer on the scene, there was some misunderstanding over the identification of the persons attempting to pass the police barrier.
They were halted by the officers on duty, but they were eventually permitted to proceed. There was some ambiguity, which was quickly handled and resolved. The accusation of manhandling, however, was refuted by Delhi Police. According to the police, MPs began raising slogans at Vijay Chowk before going towards Parliament.
“They were stopped as a result of the demonstration, and when they revealed their identities, we let them go. There was no manhandling involved “According to the police, KC Venugopal, a Congress politician, told ANI that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will collaborate on this initiative, and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will grant his approval.
“We want the Prime Minister to notice the people of Kerala’s concern and intervene to stop the Kerala Chief Minister. It is expected that the CPI(M) and the BJP would work together on this initiative, with the PM’s approval,” Venugopal said.
The Congress leader further said that the K-Silver line project proposed by the Kerala government is anti-people.
“Most people are in fear of eviction. Kerala is an economically fragile state… This is not an economically viable project. Now Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan is going to meet the PM to get a sanction,” he added.
The SilverLine project was initiated by the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in 2019. The expected cost of the project is around Rs 65,000 crore.
The 529-kilometer SilverLine railway will run from Thiruvananthapuram in the south to Kasaragod in the north, passing through 11 districts and 11 stops. The travel between two stations will take four hours, compared to the present time of 12 hours to get from one end to the other.
