Kerala’s Silver Line mother of all scams: Railways’ ex-engineer
The Semi High Speed Silver Line Rail Project (K-Rail as it is known) connecting Thiruvananthapuram with Kasaragod in less than four hours suffered a setback on Thursday as Aloke Kumar Verma, the former chief engineer of Indian Railways who led the team of experts that prepared the feasibility report, termed it as the mother of all scams the country has seen.
“This is the most unprecedented unimaginable professional dishonesty of the highest magnitude India has not seen in the past. The report submitted by the Government of Kerala is a bogus one and is full of discrepancies and suppression of facts,” Verma told The Pioneer on Thursday.
The original proposal of the Kerala Rail Development Corporation Ltd (K-Rail) to the Railway Board was for the Broad Gauge Line. After the Railway Board gave the green signal to begin the planning process, K-Rail hired a consultancy firm SYSTRA and asked it to prepare the preliminary feasibility report and instructed the latter to use broad gauge system. “The K-Rail misinformed the consultants that it had the approval of Railway Board for the same,” said Verma.
