In a bid to make the northeast part of the country more accessible, Indian Railways has lined several projects costing as much as Rs. 40 k crore. The project aims at connecting capital cities of five North Eastern states and areas bordering Myanmar, China and Bangladesh with all the other parts of the country.
Some of the highlights of this project are —
– Under this project, capital cities of Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Sikkim and Nagaland will have rail links in the coming two years.
– Several engineering marvels including India’s longest double decker rail-cum-road bridge, one of the longest tunnels in the country and world’s tallest pillar based rail bridge will be a part of this project.
– A 180-km rail link for Arunachal Pradesh to provide accessibility to the China border is also in the pipeline.
– Railways is planning to connect Agartala in Tripura to Bangladesh, which will reduce the travel time between Tripura and Kolkata to less than 10 hours from the existing 31 hours.
– A number of strategic lines will be there to help defence forces.
