Eight-year-old Nidhal had come to Kolkata for treatment from Bangladesh. Diagnosed with cancer, the Bangladeshi citizen was treated by doctors at a city hospital.
When it was time to return home, he was unable to get an air ticket. He took the Kolkata-Dhaka-Agartala bus on Monday.
“At Rs.1,400 per person till Dhaka, I find the fare to be very reasonable,” Nizamuddim, Nidhal’s father, told The Hindu .
On Monday, when the first commercial bus service (Kolkata-Dhaka-Agartala) took off from Karunamayee Stand in Salt Lake, it had 37 passengers, including Nidhal and his parents. The service was flagged of at Dhaka during the Prime Minister’s recent visit.
Of the 37, 32 are headed for Dhaka and the remaining five for Tripura. Those travelling to Dhaka are mostly medical tourists.
Even those travelling to Agartala claim that the bus service will boost connectivity. “The number of flights between Kolkata and Agartala has been reduced to half. And the bus service through Bangladesh provides us better connectivity,” Amit Kumar Banik, who was travelling to Agartala, said.
Earlier it took nearly three days to travel from Kolkata to Agartala by road. Now, the travel time has come down to 18-odd hours.
While the fare till Dhaka is Rs. 1,400 (per person), a full trip i.e. Kolkata to Agartala via Dhaka costs Rs. 1,700 (per person).
The service was formally launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladeshi counterpart, Shiekh Hasina, in the presence of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, during their visit to Bangladesh earlier this month.
Dhaka in 12 hoursRun by the West Bengal Surface Transport Corporation (WBSTC), it takes 12 hours to reach Dhaka and another six more to reach Agartala.
According to bus driver Abhijit Bera, travel documents of passengers (including visa and passport) are checked at two places — the Benapole-Petrapole border and at Akhuara near the Tripura side of the India-Bangladesh border.
“More passengers will take the bus to Agartala once the service becomes popular,” WBSTC managing director Nilanjan Shandilya said.
The bus service will be available from Kolkata thrice a week — Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays — and from Agartala on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
