Express News Service
NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Railways after a gap of seven years has once again started conducting studies on the feasibility of establishing some rail lines in the northeast as ‘Strategic Lines’. Strategic rail lines are generally constructed for military-strategic purposes, opposed to the usual utility of rail lines for civilian purposes.
“Studies are being conducted to establish strategic lines through alternate routes in order to highlight the beauty of Northeast”, Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Wednesday after visiting the Guwahati railway station on Tuesday.
He also added that the Government of India has allocated Rs 7000 crores for ongoing railway projects in the Northeast this year.
“There will be no dearth of fund for railway projects undertaken across the northeast regions”, he said, adding that electrification has now been completed from New Delhi to Guwahati.
The Minister also said the railways will soon sanction and send teams on a survey for laying the ring-road type of rail lines for local trains from bottom to the top of hills in Manipur following the request of Manipur CM Nongthombam Biren Singh.
The Railway Minister also sanctioned, on the spot, the final location survey for the new, 111 km-long new Imphal-More broad-gauge rail line connecting the Northeast to Myanmar. “Considering the strategic importance of new Imphal-More rail line, the final location survey will start within next 4 weeks”, the minister said.
NR Railway spokesperson Guneet Kaur said the Imphal-More new rail line once constructed will be of strategic importance and an important part of the proposed Trans-Asian railway to connect Asia and Europe through a rail network.
Meanwhile, some railway sources on the strategic rail lines said that the ministry had proposed the 19 railway sections in northeast east to the ministry of defence earlier also for declaring as the ‘Strategic lines’.
“This would not be the first time that railways are conducting studies for establishing new strategic lines. In 2013 and 2014, the ministry of railways had moved a proposal to the Ministry of Defence regarding the declaration of 19 already existing rail sections in North East as ‘Strategic Lines”, said a railway source.,
But then, the Ministry of Defence in October 2014 refused to accept the proposal for declaring 19 sections as strategic lines stating that sections mentioned in the proposal were out of the purview of the Armed Forces and don’t directly support the Army’s strategic requirements.
“So, it may not be possible for the Ministry of Defence to declare these 19 rail sections as strategic lines as proposed by the Ministry of Railways”, the Ministry of Defence had replied to the railways.
The railways had stated in the proposal that the 19 sections would be of very strategic importance for the movement of defence personnel in the regions after being declared as strategic lines.
Among the proposed 19 rail lines in the northeast, the Jiribam—Imphal (125 km), the Dimapur-Kohima new rail line (88 km), the Senchoa-Silghat (71.23 km) and the Lumding-Badarpur-Karimganj-Mahishashan section (286.17 km) were prominent to be declared as Strategic lines by the ministry of defence.
The Lumding-Badarpur-Kaimgnaj-Mahishashan section of NF railway goes towards the Bangladesh border and it connects the three states- Tripura, Mizoram and Manipur.
“In absence of wider availability of road networks in this region, this section is still strategically important for the movement of troops and other armed forces in case of urgency. To railways, this section incurs annual losses of more than Rs 150 crore. This section deemed to be declared as a strategic line”, said a senior railway official anonymously.
