India’s Union minister for development of north eastern region (DoNER) G Kishan Reddy on Tuesday expressed hope that the Agartala-Akhaura international railway project is very likely to be inaugurated at the end of this year.
He made the remark after visiting the Agartala railway station at Badharghat to review the project’s progress at Nischintapur village of South 24 Parganas district in the Indian state of West Bengal, along the India-Bangladesh international border, reports Hindustan Times.
Reddy said, “The project will make relations between the two countries strong. The DoNER ministry is funding the project from the Indian side. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina are likely to launch the project this year.”
The 15-kilometre-long railway line will link Akhaura through an international immigration station at India’s Nischintapur along the border. With the completion of the project, the travel time between Agartala and Kolkata via Dhaka will be reduced from 31 hours to 10 hours.
Akhaura used to be the railway link for Agartala during the British era, but the new railway project was conceptualised in 2010. Three years later, both India and Bangladesh signed a memorandum of understanding for the project.
The project was supposed to be over in 2020 but got delayed because of land acquisition issues and the Covid-19 pandemic.
