As developments take place, criticism also comes to the fore. On Tuesday, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan declared that the government will build a two-lane underground tunnel between the Chembra and Vellarimala (silver hills) range, which is known as the camel hump and is among the most delicate regions of the Western Ghats, as per the experts. The plan will create a 7-km tunnel - mooted to be the third-largest such tunnel in the country - and will combine Kozhikode and Wayanad districts. It will also provide a more extensive and substitute route to the Thamarassery Ghat road which normally remains congested, decreasing travel time to neighboring Karnataka significantly, CM Pinarayi Vijayan announced.
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However, environmental groups have asked why the tunnel project was started by the government, without a Financial Feasibility study, an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and a Sociological Impact Assessment. All these studies should have been administered in the first place, they point out. The Wayanad Prakruthi Samrakshana Samiti, a well-known environmentalist group in Kerala, published a statement aiming that the Pinarayi government had not even taken a license from the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MOEFF), before declaring the project.
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The Samiti also asserted that the state government was targetting the assembly elections and was being opportunistic by blaming environmentalists for being anti-development. Without prior scientific studies, the statement read, the tunnel project was an attempt by the state government to mine 'several lakh cubic metres of quarried stone' in the name of tunnel building. This was similar to the Gap Road expansion project in Idukki which was done without adequate feasibility studies on landslides and flooding.
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