AGARTALA, June 28 (TIWN): North East Frontier Railway (NFR) Chief Engineer Harpal Singh on Saturday arriving here at the state with the 10 members’ delegation team comprising of RCON and Container Corporation of India Ltd (CCIL) officials had held a meeting with the state Minister for Transport Manik Dey at the secretariat after inspecting the site for the India-Bangladesh railway extension project. Talking to the reporters here at the civil secretariat Singh said, “The construction work for the extension project linking India with the Bangladesh would start at the earliest.”As earlier scheduled the 10 members’ delegation team on Saturday arrived here at the state at 3:00 PM and had inspected the construction sites at Agartala Badharghat and Nishchindapur at Bangladesh site to take up the survey of the land in wake of the land acquisition expected to be started soon.Chief Engineer after the meeting at the civil secretariat talking to the reporters said, “Amongst the 15 km stretch railway line 3.7 km would be made elevated corridor and the tracks would be laid overhead with an aim to cut the project cost and also 25 acres of land would be saved.”Adding to that Singh said, “In the Indian territory the rest 2 km rail line would be in surface towards the Akhaura.” He said that as the project would be lowered and the land would be cut from the Indian Territory a new Direct Project Report (DPR) would be made soon.

“The entire funding would be done by the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry and another funding by the Government of India.” Earlier during the recently held NITI Aayog meeting it was decided that the Union Ministry of Railways would fund the project as the DoNER ministry has no available fund for the extension project.

According to the official the overhead rail track would cut the project cost which was earlier estimated as Rs. 302 crore to acquire around 98 acres of land from the Indian part. The Chief Engineer Harpal Singh informed that they would got to Delhi and would make a report on the survey being carried out by the team on Saturday here at Agartala and Bangladesh.

The Rs.575-crore railway project was finalised in January 2010 during the Bangladesh prime minister's meeting with then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi.  

Earlier it was assumed that the proposed railway project would be delayed because the Tripura Government had said, “No funds were allocated in the railway budget for 2015-16, even for land acquisition”. As per the project India will build a 15km railway tracks linking Tripura's capital Agartala with Bangladesh's southeastern city of Akhaurah, an important railway junction connected to Chittagong port, resource-rich Sylhet and Dhaka.