NEW DELHI: In some three years all the state capitals of the Northeastern region are set to be connected with railhead, with the glaring exception of Shillong – ironically once the headquarter of the undivided region.
Official sources said here the Northeast Frontier Railways (NFR), has already connected Assam’s main city Guwahati (adjoining capital Dispur), Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh’s capital cities Agartala and Itanagar respectively. It is laying tracks to connect the capital towns of three remaining NE states — Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland — by March 2023, the source said.
Work to lay the broad-gauge railway line has been progressing well in Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland, officials from Railways said. The government had even sanctioned electrification of railway lines in the region and tender-related work was being undertaken for the purpose.
But in Shillong, which is only a short distance from Assam, there is tremendous opposition from the local people on the ground of infiltration of outsiders to the hill state.
The capital witnessed violent protests when NFR started survey work seriously during the previous Congress Government.
It is perplexing that Meghalaya was connected with railhead at Mendipathar in North Garo Hills during the same regime. Inaugurated by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi by remote, the line has been running smoothly.
Both then Chief Minister Mukul Sangma and Shillong MP Vincent H Pala took keen interest in the mega project but had to give up under violent protests. There were other factors like lack of land too, but the stiff opposition from some local NGOs stopped the work which never got started again.
Even at that time, top railway officials recalled, the rail link to Mendipathar, located at an elevation of 916 metres, becoming a reality, railways would be looking at the proposed 21.5 km Tetelia-Byrnihat link, which when completed will extend further upwards about 108 km to Shillong. The final location survey of the Tetelia-Byrnihat line has long been completed.
Incidentally, the first train in the NE region puffed off from the tea town of Dibrugarh in upper Assam 138 years ago. But what is interesting is that way back in 1880, the British had contemplated on extending railway track to link its erstwhile administrative seat, Cherrapunjee, which has an elevation of 1484 metres.
One portion of it was in fact completed and put to use, while two other portions, one of which was supposed to be a ropeway that would lift and drop coaches up to Cherrapunjee, remained only on paper. Passing through Bangladesh now, the project would have been the eighth wonder of the world.
The then Cherra Companyganj State Railways (CCRS), was a contemporary of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railways. It was intended to finally connect Shillong (then capital of Assam province) with Kolkata through the plains of what is now Bangladesh.
The CCRS was in fact a narrow gauge track operating between Therria, a mining township in present-day Meghalaya, and Companyganj (now in Sylhet, Bangladesh) covering a distance of 12.1 km. The prime objective of setting up this track was to evacuate coal to Dhaka, Sylhet and Kolkata, three important Bengal towns of the past.