India and Bangladesh will come together in the effort of restoring the pre-1965 status of rail connections between the two neighbours, Bangladesh Railway Minister Mazibul Haque said.
“Currently India and Bangladesh have four operational rail links between West Bengal and western Bangladesh. More rail connections would be restored in the near future,” Haque told to the media.
He also added, “The Agartala-Akhaura (Bangladesh) new rail link will be operational within a year. Funded by India, the necessary works for laying the new 15-km rail track between Agartala railway station and Akhaura railway station has already started.”
The four already-functional railway links between India and Bangladesh are Petrapole-Benapole, Gede-Darshana, Radhikapur-Biral, and Singhabad-Rohanpur.
Two more rail connections have been proposed. Feni (Bangladesh)- Belonia (India) will connect Tripura with the city of Chittagong in Bangladesh, and West Bengal’s Siliguri will connect Panchagarh in North-Western Bangladesh, opening the scope for future cargo movement as well.
India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said earlier this week during her visit to Bangladesh that a significant area of the bilateral cooperation is the quest to increase connectivity through the restoration of pre-1965 links encompassing road, rail, water and coastal shipping.
