Indian Railways intends to extend network to Tawang & more NE regions

Last updated Mar 20, 2023 8

Guwahati: The Indian Railways has planned to extend its rail network to Tawang and other areas of the northeastern frontier state of Arunachal Pradesh in order to strengthen the Line of Actual Control (LAC) along the India-China border. This will be accomplished by assisting the Indian army in pushing its personnel and equipment into the border.

Anshul Gupta, General Manager of Northeast Frontier Railway (NRF), stated that the Indian Railways had already finished the final location survey and that the final location survey report had already been forwarded to a higher authority.

“First meeting of the Defence Ministry was also held and they agreed on two other projects – one is Bame-Aalo upto Mechuka and another project is Pasighat-Parshuram-Wakro. These three projects have already been approved and their survey has also been completed. Our target is to complete the Pasighat new line work by March 2025,” Gupta said.

He added that the NFR hopes to finish building the train connection to Aizawl by December of this year.

“There is some delay in Imphal connectivity after the Tupul incident. We are engaging in some precautionary works and we are targeting to complete the works by December 2024. The Sikkim works will be completed by December 2024, and the train will run to Serima in Nagaland in September this year. We will complete the railway project work of Serima to Kohima by March 2024.

There is an umbrella project of border and hilly area connectivity projects worth Rs 1.20 lakh crore by aiming to connect some important towns and border areas of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, and Sikkim and we are working on it with the state government, different organizations, Indian army,” Anshul Gupta said.

On the other hand, the NF Railway and Railtel have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding for the installation of the Intrusion Detection System, a system for animal protection and catastrophe prevention (IDS).

“To monitor and protect wild elephants from getting hit by trains, we have recently developed an innovative system called Intrusion Detection System (IDS). NF Railway has used AI-based software using optical fibre cable (OFC) for it. We have introduced it in the Lumding division (in between Lanka and Lumding) and the Alipurduar division (in between Hasimara to Alipurduar) and it is working successfully for the past few months. To implement this at a large scale, we have signed this MoU with Railtel by aiming to use the Railtel cable,” Anshul Gupta said.