AGARTALA, March 17 (TIWN): Commissioning of laying and constructing of Broad Gauge (BG) railway tracks of Mega Block for Agartala to Udaipur has already been started and making good progress day by day. The laying and constructing of Broad Gauge (BG) railway tracks of Mega Block for Agartala to Udaipur is completed upto Bishalgarh till date, said a NFR source.According to NFR sources, the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) is working on schedule to bring Agartala under the country’s Broad Gauge Railway Network by March 2016. After the introduction of the BG facility one could return from Guwahati to Agartala, capital town of the landlocked State Tripura in eight hours.The ambitious railway project, which is also a national project, has 79 major bridges, 340 minor bridges, 28 railway stations and four halt stations. Conversion work of 108 kilometer railway tracks of Mega Block has been already completed out of 228 kilometers. The BG conversion of the Mega Block that started on October 1st 2014 is on right track for its timely completion, the source mentioned.

If things fall in place, the ongoing work of BG conversion work from Lumding to Agartala via Badarpur would be completed by March 2016. 

The foundation of the much­ delayed gauge conversion project ­­ Lumding to Silchar and Silchar to Agartala ­­ was laid by the then prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda in Silchar in 1996. In 2004, the then prime minister Manmohan Singh declared the project a national one. The railways faced severe criticism for the delay in completing the Rs.5,185­ crore project that is considered to be a lifeline for southern Assam, Tripura, Mizoram and Manipur.

Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu, during his budget speech in the parliament on February 26, said the Indian Railways was committed to provide rail connectivity to all the northeastern states. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Nov 29, 2014 flagged off a train between Meghalaya's Mendipathar and Guwahati, a distance of 131 km, and laid the foundation stone for a 51.38 km­ long new broad gauge railway line between Bhairabi and Sairang in Mizoram.