Chennai, May 20: The Centre appears to have pruned the length of the Sethusamudram ship canal project, from the 260 km originally planned to 167.22 km.

The cabinet committee on economic affairs had yesterday cleared the proposal for the Suez Canal of the east, 145 years after it was conceived.

The project seeks to connect the Bay of Bengal with the Gulf of Mannar through a dredged channel, deepening the shallow waters on either side of the Palk Bay. This will allow ships a direct passage through Indian territorial waters.

Ships now have to go around Sri Lanka because of the shallow waters between the island nation and India.

According to the detailed project report made available today, the channel length will be only 167.22 km. The dredged portion in the Palk Strait will be 54 km and in the Adams Bridge area ? southeast of the pilgrim centre of Rameswaram ? 34 km. The remaining portion “requires no dredging”, says the report.

The dredged depth of the canal would be 12 metres and the width 300 metres for two-way traffic. Vessels of draft up to 10 metres can ply the channel safely, says the report.

The project had met with protests from environmentalists and fishermen in Ramanathapuram after it was revived in 1997-98.

In 2002, the Tuticorin Port Trust, which will implement the project on behalf of the nodal agency Sethusamudram Corporation Limited, had appointed the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (Neeri) to assess its environmental impact and techno-economic viability and do oceanographic studies.

Union shipping and surface transport minister T.R. Baalu, who took a volley of questions on the project at Chennai Port Trust today, said the research institute report had addressed all environmental issues and given the go-ahead.

“For the last one year we have been debating these issues and I do not foresee any negative impact, including from the environment point of view,” said the DMK minister.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi have been invited to inaugurate the project in the third week of June.

“Any development project will always create some displacement, but we have gone fully by what the Neeri expert group has recommended, on the basis of which a detailed environment management plan has been prepared for the construction and operation phase,” he added.

The project can be implemented in three-and-a-half years, Baalu said, adding the cost, estimated last year to be about Rs 2,000 crore, had now gone up to Rs 2,427 crore. After the construction is complete, “for the next nine years, we will be making losses and from the 15th year (since inception of the project), we will make profits”, he said.