Agartala:Another 10,000 tonnes of rice will be ferried to Tripura via Bangla-desh as train services in the northeastern states have been stopped in southern part of northeast region due to gauge conversion, a minister said here on Saturday.
Train services in Tripura, Manipur, Mizoram and southern Assam have been suspended from last Octo-ber for track conversion from meter gauge to broad gauge being undertaken by the Northeast Frontier Railways and scheduled to end March 2016 in two phases. “The Food Corpo-ration of India (FCI) infor-med us that it will transport another 10,000 tonnes of rice for Tripura via Bangladesh next week,” Tripura Food and Civil Supplies Minister Bhanulal Saha told IANS.
He said: “Tripura govern-ment has urged the central government to carry rice for the state regularly via Bangladesh till the railway’s gauge conversion works are completed. We want to create a buffer stock of food grain in Tripura before beginning of the monsoon.”
The monsoon starts in June and it continue up to September creating a gigantic problem in ferrying food grains, essentials and other goods from other parts of India to northeast via mountainous roads, as the areas are very landslide prone and jagged condtion.
The FCI last year ferried 10,000 tonnes of rice in two phases to Tripura from Visakhapatnam port in AP via Bangladesh.
“Several ships carried the rice from Visakhapatnam port to Kolkata port, then to Ashuganj port in (eastern) Bangladesh. From Ashu-ganj port, Bangladeshi trucks ferried the rice to FCI warehouses in Nandan-nagar near Agartala,” FCI official Nilanjan Chowdhury told IANS. Ashuganj port over the Meghna river in eastern Bangladesh is around 57 km from Agartala.
Chowdhury said that the next consignment of rice would be ferried from Kolkata instead of Andhra Pradesh to Tripura via Bangladesh next week to save time and costs.
The FCI has decided to carry a total of 35,000 tonnes of rice in different phases for Tripura via Bangladesh by next year.
The eight northeastern states, including Sikkim, are largely dependent on Punjab, Haryana and other bigger states in India for food grains and essential commodities.(IANS)
