Protests in Kerala against the Left Democratic Front government’s pet K-Rail Silverline project have intensified after alleged police atrocities on Thursday, with the Congress drawing parallels with the Nandigram agitation that was instrumental to ending the Left’s 34-year rule in Bengal.

K-Rail is a proposed semi-high-speed railway that will run along the length of Kerala and for which demarcation of the land to be acquired has been going on. For the past several days, residents opposed to the land acquisition have been uprooting boundary markers inscribed “K-Rail”.

On Thursday, the police used force to remove protesters in Madapally, Kottayam, amid allegations that women were roughed up.

“This is going to be a repeat of the Nandigram agitation,” leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan, who joined the protesters in Madapally on Friday, said.

Nandigram too witnessed an agitation against land acquisition by the state government, with at least 14 residents killed in firing during a protest on March 14, 2007.

The Congress-led United Democratic Front and the BJP have joined the protesters against the 529km project that is to connect Thiruvananthapuram in the south to Kasaragod in the north, cutting travel to under four hours from the current 12 hours. Environmentalists too are opposed to the Rs 64,000-crore project.

On Friday, the Assembly witnessed raucous scenes after the Opposition protested against the alleged police atrocities on K-Rail protesters. “This government is anti-women,” Satheesan said before leading an Opposition walkout.

He declared the protest would continue until the government scrapped the project.

Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan slammed the Opposition. “He (Satheesan) just wants to spread lies by ignoring the facts,” Vijayan said in the Assembly.

In Madapally, the Opposition observed a daylong shutdown. Congress MLAs Oommen Chandy and Ramesh Chennithala and Lok Sabha member Kodikunnil Suresh met the protesters.

A similar protest was held in Kallayi in Kozhikode district where residents jostled with the police before uprooting all the boundary-marker stones, painted in yellow.

Vijayan has been defending K-Rail by asking, “If not now, when?”

It was a previous LDF government helmed by V.S. Achuthanandan that first announced a high-speed railway in the 2009-2010 state budget. A UDF government headed by Chandy later pitched for a bullet train to connect the two ends of the state.

After both plans fell through, Vijayan proposed the K-Rail Silverline project in the 2019-20 state budget.