Railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Saturday said Bengal’s first bullet train would run between Siliguri and Delhi and help cover the distance in six hours.
Vaishnaw announced the country’s second high-speed train corridor after the 508km Mumbai-Ahmedabad line, which has been delayed by land acquisition, particularly in Maharashtra. The National High Speed Railway Corporation is implementing the first bullet train project, but the agency undertaking the Delhi-Siliguri project has not been specified.
“Bengal will get a bullet train between Siliguri and Delhi. The train will reach Siliguri from Delhi via Lucknow, Varanasi and Patna. One can reach Delhi from Siliguri in six hours,” Vaishnaw said at Nabanna on Saturday.
The minister was in the city to attend a meeting of senior railway and state government officials to discuss pending rail projects in Bengal.
Vaishnaw said the BJP-led Centre had plans to develop Bengal since it came to power in 2014. “Bengal had a 28km Metro rail network between 1972 and 2014. But the state got a 45km Metro rail network after 2014... Many projects could not be implemented in the state despite approvals from Delhi solely due to non-cooperation from the previous government,” he said.
The proposed network would be divided into two high-speed rail corridors — between Delhi and Varanasi and Varanasi and Siliguri. Once completed, the travel time between Delhi and Varanasi would be reduced to three-and-a-half hours, while it would take less than three hours to reach Siliguri from Varanasi.
“The high-speed network would boost trade and tourism in North Bengal and the northeastern states,” said a senior official.
A section of the officials said implementing the project through the Chicken’s Neck would be challenging. “Designing the tracks through heavily congested corridors and international borders in proximity would be a real challenge,” saidan official.
Another official listed fragile land and heavy rainfall as serious impediments. “Roads get damaged during heavy rainfall. Against this backdrop, it would be a challenge to set up the sensitive railway network,” said an official.
A senior official said work for this project was likely to start in 2028. “It remains to be seen whether the new government will take a chance by resorting to land acquisition on a mass scale before the 2029 Lok Sabha polls, given that Bengal is a land-critical state,” the official said.