Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 24: A decision by the Railway Board to redraw some railway divisions has brought two Congress-ruled states in southern India in confrontation with each other.
The Railway Board in its recent order has shifted Mangaluru area up to and including Ullal from the Palakkad division of Southern Railway to the Mysuru division of South Western Railway with effect from October 1. The interchange point between the two zones shifts from Padil to Ullal. Thokur station stays with Konkan Railway and becomes the interchange point between Konkan Railway and South Western Railway.
The change has brought Kerala and Karnataka governments confronting against each other with Kerala’s MPs announcing a satyagraha on Thiruvonam day and Karnataka’s business and political voices demanding that the state hold on to what it has gained from the Railway Board.
Some of the MPs from Kerala. Including the senior leader Shashi Tharoor, have not only strongly opposed the move but many of them have also threatened to launch an agitation against the decision. Kerala’s ruling UDF MPs MK Raghavan, ET Mohammed Basheer and Shafi Parambil said at a joint press conference that they would sit in satyagraha in front of the Palakkad Divisional Railway Manager’s office on Wednesday. They called the transfer unjust and unacceptable, and said it would hurt railway development and passenger interests across Malabar and Kerala.
The MPs demanded that the August 21 order of the Railway Board be kept in abeyance and that no further steps be taken until formal consultations were held with the Kerala government and the state’s MPs. They put the loss at Rs 1,000 crore to Rs 1,100 crore a year in revenue generated through Mangaluru port and the stations around it.
Mr Tharoor described it as a shocking decision with severe financial and operational repercussions for the state. He said the MPs had decided to protest the decision taken without any consultation with the affected state government or its members of Parliament, and that they want the decision suspended until a thorough discussion takes place. MPs from the Palakkad division and beyond would hold a dharna. Mr Tharoor said he has drafted a letter to the Railway Minister that would be signed unanimously by the UDF MPs, adding that Kerala was entitled to a hearing, a fair process and a just outcome.
Chief Minister VD Satheesan had earlier called the decision unilateral and unacceptable, and said by excluding Mangaluru Junction the revenue of the Palakkad division would fall sharply, hurting the division’s development. He said the state was neither informed nor consulted and described the Railway Ministry’s decision as highly condemnable. The Chief Minister’s Office has said letters would be sent to the Prime Minister and the Railway Minister, and that Kerala’s MPs would press for a review.
In Karnataka, TV Mohandas Pai, chairman of Aarin Capital and former chief financial officer of Infosys, addressed the Karnataka Chief Minister directly and asked for a strong response from Karnataka to protect its interests. “The Mangaluru division belongs to us,” he said, tagging Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, Chief Minister DK Shivakumar and Mangaluru MP Brijesh Chowta.
Chowta had welcomed the order as bringing Mangaluru’s railways under one roof, and said the demand was among the priorities he took up within days of taking oath in June 2024. He thanked the Prime Minister, Vaishnaw and Minister of State for Railways V Somanna.
Coastal Karnataka has argued for years that its railway region was split between Southern Railway, South Western Railway and Konkan Railway, and that Southern Railway drew the revenue while local infrastructure lagged. Former Dakshina Kannada MP Nalin Kumar Kateel had told Vaishnaw that the Mangaluru region had not seen adequate development because of what he called step-motherly treatment by Southern Railway, even though freight and passenger revenues from the region were very high.
The Railway Board’s decision was taken on the view of people’s representatives and Somanna that bringing Karnataka’s railway stations under one division would help development. Karnataka’s older demand, for a separate Mangaluru division or zone, has not been granted.
BJP national executive member and former state president PK Krishnadas said in Kannur that the campaign by the Congress and the CPM was politically motivated and that the change would will not affect passengers in any way.
About 90 per cent of the Palakkad division’s freight movement comes from the Mangaluru region. The division’s daily earnings are put at around Rs 2.75 crore. Panambur, the goods yard serving New Mangalore Port, handled freight worth about Rs 625 crore last financial year. One assessment cited in Kerala reports is a fall of close to 60 per cent in the division’s revenue. Three crore passengers used the division in the first four months of 2026-27.
After October 1 the division will extend only up to Ullal, about 35 km from Kasaragod on the Kerala side of the Netravati river. Thiruvananthapuram will be the only other railway division in the state. Kerala’s concern is that fund allocation, sanction of new trains and clearance of new lines were linked to a division’s size and earnings.
Staff will be given the option of remaining with Southern Railway or moving to South Western Railway, with seniority fixed on length of service in the existing grade. A further gazette notification will specify the new divisional and zonal boundaries.