AGARTALA, Dec 13 (TIWN): The Northeastern state Tripura to have direct broad-gauge rail connectivity with rest of India soon. The railways are presently undertaking a project, what they call as ‘Mega Block’, to convert the state’s metre gauge rail track to broad gauge and it is expected to be completed. BG work already completed at Dharmanagar.

Agartala found place in the railway map of India in the year 2008 when a metre gauge line was extended from Kumarghat, also in Tripura, to Agartala. This gave the city 407 km direct metre-gauge rail connectivity with Lumding in central Assam. A daily express train ran between Lumding and Agartala. Lumding is an important railway junction of Assam and falls under Guwahati-Dibrugarh broad-gauge rail section.
Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) sources said the pace of conversion work on Badarpur-Agartala section would be faster than the Lumding-Badarpur-Silchar section as the metre-gauge tracks between Kumarghat and Agartala (distance 107 km) were laid keeping in mind the need of future conversion project.
“The distinct advantage of having a broad gauge rail destination at Agartala would be that it will not only serve as a railway junction for further expansion of network in the region but would, in the later stages, also help in supplementing the rail connection with neighboring countries, particularly Bangladesh. In addition to improving the transport infrastructure in the region, this would also be an adjuvant to India’s “Act East” policy,” said Jitendra, Union minister for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER).
The Indian railways is also in the process of laying a 15 km long rail track to connect Agartala with Akhaura in Bangladesh. This is with the objective to provide an alternative rail route for Northeast India to Kolkata via Bangladesh.