By Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury, KUNA
New Delhi : Neighbours India and Bangladesh are scheduled to resume a passenger train service from April 14 after four decades.
All details regarding schedule and fares for the train service have been finalised, an official in the Indian Railway Ministry told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) here Sunday.
Indian Railway Board’s R N Varma was in Dhaka, earlier this week, to finalise the details. A formal agreement for starting “The Moitree” (friendship) Express is likely to be signed ahead of April 14. The Moitree Express will operate weekly between the Cantonment Railway Station in Dhaka and Chitpur station in Eastern Indian city of Kolkata covering a distance of 538 kilometers, of which 418 km located in Bangladesh.
The train will accomodate 418 passengers. The fare will be USD eight per person for economy class and USD 12 per person in the air-conditioned compartment. A sleeper berth will be worth USD 20, the official said, adding, commuters would be allowed to carry 35 kilograms of luggage. The train service was stopped after the India-Pakistan War in 1965.
Bangladesh was not created then and was known as East Pakistan.
“Dhaka has allowed an Indian proposal for constructing box-type fencing along the train route in no man’s land to prevent smuggling and infiltration,” the official said, adding, “this is imperative from our security perspective.” India and Bangladesh share a 4,000-km-long border. Several terror blasts in India in the past few years have been traced to groups based in Bangladesh. Leaders of number of insurgent groups from India’s Northeast are also reported to be based in Bangladesh and operating from there.