M. Vijayakumar, former Minister, has urged the State government to act immediately on the report it has received from the Director General of Police informing that “a group of people from the State conspired with certain high officials in New Delhi to sabotage the proposed Vizhinjam port project”.

The project is now being evaluated by an Expert Appraisal Committee of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests.

He alleged that a lobby of resort owners at Vizhinjam was behind this conspiracy. Twenty-nine of the 31 tourist resorts functioning along the Vizhinjam coastal stretch were found to have violated the Coastal Regulation Zone norms. Instead of evicting them from the project area, the United Democratic Front government was protecting them right from the time it came to power, he alleged.

Source: The Hindu