India-Bhutan connectivity boost: Two cross-border rail links announced

The two railway links announced with Bhutan will now connect the landlocked Himalayan nation with the 70,000-kilometre rail network of India.

The two rail links, spanning 69 km and 20 km, will connect Bhutan with the neighbouring Indian states of West Bengal and Assam.

  The 69-km Kokrajhar–Gelephu line will cost about ₹3,456 crore, while the 20-km Banarhat–Samtse line is estimated at ₹577 crore, reports said. 

Making the announcement, Indian Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said: " This project is basically connecting two very important cities of Bhutan. One is Gelephu, as Foreign Secretary shared with us."

"This is being developed as a mindfulness city. And second is Samtse, which is an industrial city. The two projects will take off from the network of Indian railways at Kokrajhar and Banarhat," he said.

"The investment which is envisaged at this point of time is about 4,033 crore rupees. And the total length is about 90 kilometers. To be precise, 89 kilometers of railway network will be created," Vaishnaw said.

He said the projects will benefit people in Bhutan.

"The entire area will get connected. And lots of goods movement, which takes days today, will start happening in few hours. We have seen in Mizoram, it used to take four or five days for a cement truck or steel or any other goods truck to reach the capital Aizawl," he said.

"Now that's happening in a few hours. So, that kind of benefit will come. Just like in case of Srinagar, we have seen that the time for goods shrinks from days to hours. So, that is the benefit which will happen for Samtse as well as Gelephu," the Minister said.