The SFI and DYFI— CPM’s student and youth wings — on Thursday took out rallies and gave memorandums to station managers of nine important railway stations in Birbhum demanding the restart of local and express trains in the district.
Halted in March because of the pandemic, local train services in Bengal have recently resumed under Howrah and Sealdah divisions, but don’t extend beyond Burdwan. Commuters in districts such as Birbhum are left out of the loop.
There are at least 45 pairs of local and express trains ran on the Burdwan-Sahibganj loop line in the area. However, Nikhil Kumar Chakraborty, the chief PRO of Eastern Railway, said he did not know when train services on this loop line route would resume.
SFI and DYFI leaders said Birbhum had two important tourist destinations — Santiniketan and Tarapith — and students and workers need to travel to Burdwan and Calcutta frequently. Without local trains, commuting is costly and tough, they said.
Sources said there were at least a hundred villages and six towns in Birbhum dependent on train services.
“Several Visva-Bharati students need to call on their teachers for issues related to research. Thousand have to travel to Burdwan and Calcutta to attend tuition classes for competitive exams. Lack of trains affects all of them and there is no talk about resumption of the facility,” said SFI Birbhum unit secretary Wasif Iqbal.
“Hundreds of hawkers, traders and professionals are dependent on trains. They used to go to Burdwan or Calcutta regularly. Now they are paying Rs 500-1,000 to hire cars,” said Birbhum DYFI secretary Manotosh Majumder.