New Delhi, Feb. 26: Lalu Prasad’s railway budget seems to hide more than it shows what the Northeast will get.

Although the budget does not have much for the region in popular perception, Lalu has outlined a slew of measures to galvanise the growth of rail infrastructure across the states. One of the proposals is a non-lapsable Northeast Rail Development Fund on the lines of the non-lapsable pool of central funds available to the ministry for development of the northeastern region (DoNER).

The railway minister did not specify the volume of the fund in his budget speech, but sources said the decision — in principle — had already been taken by the Prime Minister’s Office. The Planning Commission and the DoNER ministry will work out the modalities soon.

Delhi decided earlier this year to implement national rail projects with a 25 per cent contribution from the railway ministry’s gross budgetary support and sanction the rest as additional assistance. Officials in the DoNER ministry were gung-ho about the development.

Lalu Prasad today thanked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the decision and sought Rs 1,712 crore in additional funds for eight national projects, as many as seven of them in the region. The railway ministry requires the extra resources for the proposed Jiribam-Agartala, Dimapur-Kohima, Azra-Byrnihat and Kumarghat-Agartala routes, the Bogibeel rail-cum-road bridge and for the Lumding-Silchar-Jiribam and Rangia-Murkongselek gauge conversion projects.

Four new trains were announced for the Northeast, three of them to destinations beyond the region. The trains are Kamakhya-Gaya Express (weekly), Kamakhya-Gandhidham Express (weekly), New Dibrugarh Town-Kamakhya Express via Moranhat (tri-weekly) and the New Dibrugarh Town-Yesvantpur Express (weekly), also via Moranhat.

There was good news for trade, too. Lalu Prasad announced a six per cent freight reduction for transportation of goods to the region.

Lalu Prasad’s announcement of another project, an Agartala-Sabroom link, means tracks will stretch right till the Indo-Bangladesh border. A rail link to Sabroom will bring the Chittagong port closer to the region.