The tracks are laid. The station is ready. Everything else is in place. But Left-ruled Tripura still waits for the Congress-led UPA government to send its first train to Agartala.
After withdrawing support from the UPA, the Left parties, especially the CPI(M), have sent repeated requests in the past few months to Rail Bhawan — to its once-beloved ally Lalu Prasad — but there are still no specific answers on when the state’s first train will chug off the Agartala station.
From July, when the Left parties mounted pressure over the nuclear deal and eventually withdrew their support, to the first week of September, three deadlines to inaugurate the train to Tripura were missed.
The CPI(M)’s latest efforts are to open the passenger train service at least before Durga Puja in October. CPI(M) leader in Lok Sabha and chairman of the railway standing committee Basudeb Acharia said, “I have requested the railway minister on Tuesday to inaugurate the service by the third week of September. This should be a Puja gift to the people of Tripura.”
On June 29, the railways held a successful trial run on the newly-built track from Ambassa to Agartala covering 68 km, prompting the CPI(M) to request Prasad to commence the passenger service in July itself. The plan didn’t materialise and subsequently, Acharia and his comrades in the Tripura government asked for two more sets of dates for the inauguration — the eve of August 15 and then the first week of September. Both have lapsed.
Agartala will be the second capital town in the North-East after Guwahati to be included in the country’s railway map. The cost of the construction of new lines up to Agartala has been estimated at Rs 890 crore.
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While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has agreed to flag off the first train from the Agartala station, the railway ministry hasn’t informed the state government when it intends to start passenger trains from Agartala.
As the PM will be busy in New York attending the United Nations General Assembly session during the third and fourth weeks of September, a desperate CPI(M) has asked Prasad not to wait for the PM and cut the ribbon himself. The trains will run on a metre-gauge line and link Assam’s Silchar with the Tripura capital.
Meanwhile, the CPI(M) is all ready to welcome the first train in the state. Acharia has already extracted a promise from Prasad that the train would be named “Bhasha Shaheed Express” in the memory of the martyrs of Language Movement, which eventually led to the independence of Bangladesh. Acharia has also pursued that the Silchar station be renamed as Bhasha Shaheed station as 11 people died on May 19, 1961 at the Silchar station site, demanding official status for Bengali language.
The Union Home Ministry too, has accepted the proposal and will notify the change of name shortly.
Everything else is in place. Except a train to Tripura.