1. Kodagu district is part of Western Ghats, which is one of UNESCO-designated biodiversity hotspots. About 325 endangered species are concentrated around Western ghats, which are the last habitats for many of these. Now look at the proposed alignment with satellite image (I have attached the image), you can see that it directly cuts through these virgin forests. Now imagine the impact of railway line through this forest, the amount of disturbances it can create. Adding to the point discussed above, this is one of the projects which is destroying the ecology of this region, others being electric transmission line between Kozhikode and Mysuru, planned road-widening of NH-275, apart from multiple illegal resorts that has come up within the limits of reserved forests (for this, it is the fault of state govt. they are doing nothing to tackle this, which rises the suspicion if these resort owners have bought the Karnataka...
more... forests minister Ramnath Rai). Similar illegal resorts have also come up at Anshi-Dandeli tiger reserve, which coincidentally is near to UBL-VSG line.
2. Many of people from Kodagu have been strongly opposing this project. Guess which group among these people have strongest opposition? It's military veterans.
3. As for rainfall, let's look at rainfall statistics for Kodagu district from 2004-2010. It shows steady decline from 243cm in 2004, (after which it raised to 304cm in 2005) to 231cm in 2010. This decreasing rainfall means Kaveri river is not getting enough rainfall, which is further aggravating the water crisis between Karnataka and Tamilnadu (2016), and making drought situation in K'taka and T'nadu worse.
link for rainfall data:
click here4. How this line, once completed will be profitable is beyond my understanding. Already another line runs connects interior Karnataka with western coast, which is HAS-MAJN line. For me, doubling and electrification of HAS-MAJN section makes more sound economic sense than constructing a parallel new line, for which land needs to be acquired again, which means more delays. Agree, as per current HMRDC agreement, there is a limit on railway traffic on this line, but the company itself is planning to augment capacity, which means more trains will be run anyways.
5. I have the same point for UBL-Ankola new line. Why construct a new line through sensitive ecological area, when a line parallel to this is already getting doubled and electrified?
These are the reasons why Kodagu people are against this project.