Udhampur, April 13: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flagged off the Uttar Kranti Sampark Express today, realising a dream of decades for the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

The people of Udhampur, who had been waiting for the day for 22 years, cheered and clapped incessantly as Singh waved the green flag to signal its first journey on the 53-km Udhampur-Jammu track passing through 28 bridges and 21 tunnels overlooking the militancy-hit hills.

The Rs 515-crore Jammu-Udhampur line, which is the first phase of the Rs 7,000-crore Jammu-Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla national rail line project linking the Kashmir Valley with the rest of the country, is expected to be completed by 2007.

Conceived in 1898 by Dogra ruler Partap Singh, the idea took concrete shape in 1983 when then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi laid the foundation stone of the project.

Describing the day as ?historic?, Union parliamentary affairs minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said on this day in 1919, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place and it was on the same day 22 years ago that Indira Gandhi laid the foundation stone of the project.

The present track, with 20 per cent of it going through tunnels ? one of them over 10 km long and crossing the Pir Panjal range is considered the longest in the country ? has reduced the distance of the Valley from the plains in Jammu to 228 km from 294 km.

Sticking to his familiar vision of attaining economic prosperity through political will to fight the scourge of terrorism and violence, the Prime Minister said the Centre would take the rail link to the Kashmir Valley, touching the holy town of Katra, Reasi, Qazigund, Srinagar and Baramulla, by 2007.

?The rail link to the Valley is going to be full of challenges and that is what our engineers have taken up,? Singh said. The project would require constructing 90 tunnels and several bridges, including one that would stand 400-m tall and 1.5-km long across the Chenab, the mightiest river in the state.

Today?s journey is a big step towards bringing the Valley closer to the rest of the country and expanding commercial opportunities, the Prime Minister stressed. ?This is in keeping with our commitment to make Jammu and Kashmir flourish with peace and economic prosperity.

?In this process, the Centre, the state government and the people of Jammu and Kashmir will have to join hands to implement the projects. We will leave no stone unturned.?

The Prime Minister also announced that the railway track between Jammu and Jalandhar in Punjab would be doubled as part of the national project.

Railway minister Laloo Prasad Yadav outlined the projects that his ministry was undertaking in Jammu and Kashmir to boost development and generate employment.

He announced that a sleeper coach factory would be set up in Kathua and a ballast depot in Manwal. Besides, one member from each family that has lost land due to the project would get a job in the railway. The minister also promised that locals would get preference in opening tea and other shops in the stations.

Despite terrorist threats to the project and the abduction and murder of railway engineer Sudhir Pundeer, the ministry would go all out to complete it within the timeframe, Laloo Prasad asserted. ?We want to narrow distances.?

Chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed described the journey as unfolding of yet another chapter in the state?s history that has come less than a week after the resumption of the bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad on April 7.