Vijayan told reporters here that it was a matter of happiness that the Prime Minister had agreed to launch the natural gas pipeline project.
"Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan called yesterday. He informed that the Prime Minister consented to virtually inaugurate the Kochi-MangaluruGAIL pipeline on January 5," he said.
It was a matter of happiness that a project, once believed to never materialise, was finally ready and the Prime Minister himself was inaugurating it, the Chief Minister added.
The 444-km long pipeline was launched in 2009 at an estimated cost of Rs 2,915 crore and was to be commissioned in 2014.
But both the public and residents along the line of the pipeline and political parties had offered stiff opposition on safety and commercial grounds and the land price was the main hurdle. This had left the project hang fire for quite some time.
This had led to the project cost nearly doubling to over Rs 5,750 crore.
(Based on PTI story)