Thiruvananthapuram,  The Opposition in the Kerala Assembly on Friday announced to lead the on-going protests against the Rs 63,940 crore K-Rail project, the ambitious scheme of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

If completed, it will see a 529.45 km corridor connecting Thiruvananthapuram to Kasaragod with high speed trains covering the distance in around four hours. As per NITI Aayog, it might cost Rs 1.24 lakh crore when it nears completion in 2025.

On Friday, the last day of the current Assembly session, the entire opposition right from the start of the Question Hour, was up in arms against the ruling CPI-M raising slogans against K-Rail and Vijayan for "destroying" peace in the state and insisting on meaningless and a foolish project.

As the sloganeering continued unabated, a visibly angry Vijayan accused the opposition of creating confusion and is in the forefront of a "slander" campaign against the project.

With Speaker M.B.Rajesh's instructions falling on deaf ears, he had to stop the proceedings briefly. But when it resumed, chaos prevailed and Leader of Opposition V.D. Satheesan slammed Vijayan for his autocratic style of functioning. He vowed to see to it Vijayan being forced to announce the calling of the proposed dream project of his.

"We will now lead the protest of the people and will force you to shelve it. Our state wide protests programme has been announced and will be taken to its logical conclusion," said Satheesan.

The protests at Changnacherry in Kottayam district on Thursday turned for the worse when the police clashed with the protesters of the locality through which the K-Rail project is proposed to pass through.

Protests took a violent turn when women and children were dragged by the police and arrests were also made.

On Friday, the locality continues to be tense with more people joining the protests and Satheesan announced to head to Changnacherry to join the protesters, along with the top leaders of the opposition.

In the past few days, the number of protests across the state has increased hugely and on Friday, Metroman E.Sreedharan led the BJP protesters at Trissur and blamed Vijayan for the present unrest that has spread across the state.

"It's the arrogance of Vijayan which is root cause of the protests and what happened at Changnacherry on Thursday when women and children were roughed up does not augur well at all," said Sreedharan.

Now with the Assembly session over and the Covid protocols also being eased, both the Congress and the BJP have announced massive protests against the project.