North-Eastern states to be brought on railways map soon

Giving a major push to rail infrastructure in the North-East region, railways has plans to bring capitals of all seven states on the map by 2020.

Work has started on four corridors to connect states like Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland with the rest of the country.

Railways are also constructing a rail line in Sikkim, but decision has not been taken on connecting the corridor with state capital Gangtok.

Senior railway ministry officials said conversion of railway tracks from meter gauge to broad gauge in the north eastern region is almost complete and soon major cities will be connected by rail route. "In the North East region, Indian Railways commissioned about 900 km of broad gauge line in the last two years, leaving only about 30 km of metre gauge lines to be converted. The work will be completed by end of this year," said VK Gupta, Member (Engineering), Railway Board.

Rail connectivity already exists for capital cities of Guwahati in Assam, Agartala in Tripura and Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh.

Infrastructure boost in the North East region has been a key poll-promise of PM Narendra Modi and much emphasis has been laid on it over the last two years.

According to railway officials, commissioning of railway lines in these states will not only reduce travel time between North East and major Indian cities but also strengthen the economy of these states.

They said it will bring down the price of essential commodities in the North East region, particularly food grains.

"All the state capitals of the North East region will be connected by broad gauge rail network by the year 2020," a senior official said.

Passenger services have been introduced between Silchar and Agartala, thereby bringing, the capital of Tripura on broad gauge. Similarly, Dudhnoi-Mendipathar (20km) new line has brought Meghalaya on the broad gauge network as well.

With the commissioning of Kathakal-Bhairabi and Arunachal - Jiribam sections, the states of Mizoram and Manipur have also come on the broad-gauge map of the country, officials said.

Rangapara - Murkongselek and Balipara-Bhalukpong (362 km) section in Arunachal Pradesh and Lumding-Silchar (210 km) gauge conversion in Assam are some of the important railway lines commissioned in the last two years.

Gupta said no deadline has been set for completion of projects in North East given the difficult mountainous terrain and weather conditions.

"Completion of projects depends on many factors such as land acquisition, forestry and wild life clearances, shifting of services, construction of road over and road under bridges by road maintaining agencies, law and order situation etc. in addition to availability of funds. As many of these factors are not within the control of Railways, it is not feasible to fix timelines for all the projects," he said.

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