Northeast India’s Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland to have Rail Connectivity
News Desk
Northeast India’s Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland are going have rail connectivity by 2023. If that happens, six of the eight north-eastern states’ capital cities will come on the Indian railway map by March 2023, top railway officials said.
The North-east Frontier Railways (NFR), which has already connected Assam’s main city Guwahati (adjoining capital Dispur), Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh’s capital cities, is laying tracks to connect the capital cities of three more north-eastern states Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland by March 2023.
The first train in the north-east region chugged out from the industrial city of Dibrugarh in eastern Assam 138 years ago. NFR’s General Manager Sanjive Roy said new railway lines were laid to extend the railway lines in three more capital cities of northeast India- Imphal (Manipur), Aizawl (Mizoram) and Kohima (Nagaland) excluding Meghalaya’s Shillong and Sikkim’s Gangtok.
The work to lay the broad gauge railway line has been progressing well in Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland. There are some land-related and other environmental problems in Sikkim and Meghalaya, causing the delay in extending the railway networks in the two hilly states.
The NFR, one among the 17 railway zones in India, operates fully and partially in six of the eight northeastern states, excluding Meghalaya and Sikkim, and in seven districts of West Bengal and five districts of north Bihar.
The NFR General Manager said the government had sanctioned electrification of railway lines in the region and tender-related work was being undertaken for the purpose. The works for the 12.23-km Agartala (Tripura)-Akhaura (Bangladesh) new railway lines are underway and it would be completed by March next year.
The Agartala-Akhaura railway line would facilitate ferrying of goods to and from both the countries and greatly benefit India’s land-locked north-eastern states. The journey time between Agartala and Kolkata via Bangladesh would be reduced by a third, from 1,613 km through mountainous terrain to only 514 km.
Linking with the existing Agartala railway station, of the 12.23 km India-Bangladesh new railway line, 5.46 km railway tracks were laid in India (on the outskirts of the capital city Agartala) and 6.57 km railway line laid on the Bangladesh side.
The Rs 972-crore project was finalized in January 2010 when Bangladesh premier Sheikh Hasina met the then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during her visit to New Delhi.
Spending Rs 1,150 crore, the NFR had extended the railway lines up to two bordering sub-divisional towns, Sabroom and Belonia-both cities situated along the Bangladesh border, facilitating the link with the railway networks of Bangladesh.