By IANS
Dhaka : Ticket sales for the India-Bangladesh train – which will resume services April 14 after a gap of 43 years – began here Thursday.
Windows opened at the Kamalpur railway station here to sell tickets for the Dhaka-Kolkata Maitree Express. The service will begin April 14 on the occasion of Paila Baishakh, celebrated in India and Bangladesh as Bengali New Year.
The train has got the green signal after months of talks as well as a formal signing of an agreement between a senior official of Bangladesh’s communications ministry and Indian High Commissioner Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty Wednesday.
The train service that used to link Dhaka, the then capital of East Pakistan, with Kolkata, was snapped after India and Pakistan fought a war in 1965.
The Maitree Express will run from the Cantonment station in Dhaka and Chitpur station in Kolkata through the Darshana border.
A train will leave Dhaka for Kolkata every Saturday and return to Dhaka on Sunday. Another train will leave Kolkata every Saturday and will go back on Sunday.
Train fares will be between $8 and $20 for the 538 km journey – 418 km in Bangladesh and 120 km in India.
Elaborate infrastructure, including a customs and immigration centre and fencing to ward off illegal intrusion of men and goods, is ready on the Indian side, but is yet to be put in place by Bangladesh.