Date:01/07/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/07/01/stories/2007070152370300.htm

Tamil Nadu

Plea for Karur-Tiruchi bus service via Kulithalai

Staff Reporter

KULITHALAI: Public belonging to Kuzhumani, Kavandampatti and Perugamani areas on Karur-Tiruchi border are demanding a new bus service connecting Tiruchi and Karur via Kulithalai.

“There are thousands of people in hundreds of villages that mark the suggested route. We find it extremely difficult to reach Karur or Tiruchi quickly and are forced to take a detour to Kulithalai to board buses to those destinations,” points out Cauvery Delta Farmers Welfare Association deputy secretary Kavandampatti R. Subramanian.

All the interior villages lie at least 7 km from the main route.

Thousands of farmers are faced with the necessity to go to Karur and Tiruchi to meet officials or to transact Government business. Other office-goers too find it difficult to get buses from their places and are forced to travel by town buses that serve the locations, entailing loss of time in travel, farmers from the neighbouring Nangavaram complain. The situation could best be addressed by introducing bus services between Karur and Tiruchi touching Woriayur, Kuzhumani, Koppu, Kavandampatti, Nangavaram, Perugamani and Pettaivaithalai.

Repeated requests at various for a over the years have fell on deaf ears and we now he hope Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi would heed our request since a majority of the proposed service area falls under his first Assembly constituency Kulithalai which he won in 1952.

In particular, we need buses in the late evenings and nights when our people are forced to leg their way for long distances in pitch darkness exposing themselves to avoidable dangers.

Introduction of new bus routes in the suggested route would prove a great boon for our areas, the villagers say.