AGARTALA, Oct 25 � Aiming to push the Indo-Bangla rail link, the Centre has invited officials from all stakeholders in the railway extension project to attend a meeting to be held at Delhi on October 27, official sources confirmed here on Saturday.
The meeting came as a sudden reminder to the much-silenced rail project discussions since the third meeting of the project steering committee was held in June this year.
Earlier, Indian envoy at Dhaka Sandip Chakraborty met Chief Minister Manik Sarkar in his office here and discussed on the progress of bilateral projects. According to sources the Ministry of Railways and Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had absolutely no communication with the State over the fourth project committee meeting scheduled for second week of September.
The meeting was abruptly postponed and no communication was passed to the State Government, the source said. Asked on feedback from the Centre, an official of the State administration said. The DoNER, which was supposed to fund the Agartala-Akhaura rail project under the Planning Commission awards, denied taking up the project.
�We have successfully carried out survey of the proposed alignment in the Tripura part�, the official stated adding that the survey report proposed a Rs 302 crore fund requisition to the Central Government. Resident Commissioner of Delhi Tripura Bhawan would be attending the meeting on behalf of the State Government.
IRCON, a Central Government PSU, was entrusted with the responsibility to handle all operations of construction of the railway lines between Akhaura and Agartala over a distance of 15 km � a project that would literally change the way bilateral relations between India and Bangladesh were defined.
Sources inside IRCON said that over 4.5 km land area out of the 5 km stretch of rail-line required for the project in Tripura sector was demarcated.
However, sources claimed the proposed project length in the Indian side from Agartala till Nischintapur was found to have extended from 5 km to 6.5 km.
