AGARTALA, May 8 (TIWN): Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu, said that currently projects worth about Rs. 90,000 crore are being executed in the northeast. Prabhu, who is on a two day visit to Northeast India, laid the foundation stone for construction of a 26-km-long new broad gauge railway line from Mukongselek in Assam to Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh. However, after this Northeast visit, Prabhu’s next visit will be fully centering on Tripura for Garji railway station inauguration programme. On the other hand Amit Shah, BJP National President has stressed upon the Indo-Bangla project which will boost the commercial ties with South East Asia. A report says that a total 5 states have been brought o­n the BG network during last three years. With this, all the NE states except Sikkim are now connected o­n Broad Gauge network.

It's worthy to mention here that Trains first reached Tripura in 1964 when the railway was extended to the state's northern business hub, Dharmanagar.  & later it was extended further to Kumarghat. 

The northeastern state capital came on India's railmap with the advent of the railways in the subcontinent in 1853. The foundation stone of the 119 km Kumarghat-Agartala railway project was laid in 1996 by the former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda and during the laying of rail lines, provisions were kept for swiftly converting it to broad gauge. 40 years time was taken by the Government since then to connect Agartala by rail.

The NFR had spent Rs 900 crore ($190 million) to connect Agartala by rail by making three tunnels through the Longtharai Valley, Baramura and Atharamura Hills in Dhalai and West Tripura districts. The 1,962-metre Longtharai tunnel is the longest railway tunnel in eastern India.The architecture of the station resembles Ujjayanta Palace.

Now the state has 4 Express trains and seamless railway network upto Udaipur.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley during the budget presentation said that it is after 92 years that the rail budget has been merged with the General Budget. Pointing out the expectation of people from the Railway budget Jailtley said, “Our government was elected amidst huge expectations of people, the underlying theme of expectations being good governance. However the Finance confirmed that Indian Railways' autonomy would be maintained even after its budget was merged with the Union Budget 2017-18. Thus it can be assumed that NE states and other states would not be deprived and the railway budget is to hike than the last year also. But a Rs 1,31,000 crore for railways capex and development expenditure in 2017-18, announced Jaitley. Apart from that Government earmarks new railway safety fund of Rs one lakh crore. Rs 10,000 crore allocation for laying optic fibre cables.

It’s worthy to mention here that the Railway budget has been the key focus of the Tripura people, although the budget yet to be declared.

Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu during the inauguration of the 6th  BG train service in Tripura via video conference from New Delhi said, “Northeast State Tripura will not be deprived of any modern technology, which will help to increase the train speed in this zone”. “Like other states Northeast State Tripura will be equally treated when it comes for service”, said Suresh Prabhu. “We are next planning to increase train speed upto 100 KM per hour”, said Prabhu.