Students urge PM Modi to change Odisha coastal highway alignment

JAGATSINGHPUR: Over 500 students of 52 schools of Balikuda block of the district have drawn attention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik seeking inclusion of their villages in the coastal highway project.

Implementation of a new map alignment which shifts the highway to about 25 km away from coastline will leave them exposed to natural calamities, students of the 52 schools said. Sheetal Mahek Routray, a student of Delhi Public School, Kalinga urged villages under Balikuda-Erasama Assembly constituency be included in Centre’s ambitious coastal highway project.

Sheetal who had taken part in the debate competition at Odisha Literary Festival-2022 organised by The New Indian Express and won cash prize of Rs 11,000 said in 2015, Union Roads and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari had announced the highway project which had brought hope for lakhs of people of Balikuda and Erasama blocks which are prone to natural calamities.

“This (the project) was a ray of hope for lakhs who have been subjected to timely floods and oceanic storms which fractured the backbone of the affected. They have braved the 1999 super cyclone which took lives of thousands, devastating the entire geography till date,” she stated in the letter. Sheetal urged the prime minister to construct the highway as per the old plan as it would benefit the locals.

As per the new plan, the highway has been shifted around 25 km from the coast. Another student Asutosh Swain, a Class IV student of Government Primary School at Anantpur in Balikuda, said the coastal highway would not protect his village from tidal waves as it will pass 30 km away.