The Indian Railways has decided to set up a rail coach factory on the Bengal-Assam border at a location that falls under the Alipurduar division of the Northeast Frontier Railway(NFR), a senior railway official said here on Monday.

This would be the first-of-its-kind factory in east and northeast India and is expected to generate considerable employment for residents of north Bengal and the neighbouring state of Assam.

“The factory is likely to be set up at a location which is in Assam but is closer to the divisional headquarters of Alipurduar (which is in Bengal). We have started gathering details about stretches of land in the region and would soon start surveying the sites,” said Dilip Kumar Singh, the divisional railway manager (DRM) of Alipurduar division.

Sources in the NFR said the factory was likely to come up somewhere in Kokrajhar, a district in Assam that shares borders with Bengal. Also, Kokrajhar is one of the four districts of the neighbouring state which are under the Bodoland Territorial Council.

The railway officials have already earmarked a plot in Srirampur, a locality close to the interstate border.

“We need to have the factory at a site that is also close to the principal rail track which connects Guwahati and northeast with New Alipurduar and the rest of the country. Experts are drawing layouts and making estimates as there is a plan to build a factory that can manufacture at least 1,000 LHB coaches in a year,” said a railway official.

As of now, the railways have the rail coach factory in Kapurthala of Punjab, the modern coach factory at Raebareli of Uttar Pradesh, and the integral coach factory in Chennai of Tamil Nadu.

The project, railway sources said, is a part of the rail ministry’s ambitious target to start 100 per cent indigenous manufacturing of rail coaches by 2022.

The decision to set up the factory has evoked a mixed response among residents of Alipurduar and north Bengal as a whole.

“It will generate huge employment in direct and indirect manner as the site will eventually develop into a township. Schools, hospitals, market complexes and some other facilities will come up at the site, as it is there in Kapurthala or Raebareli. Such a major industrial infrastructure can largely help in improving the economy of this region,” pointed Prasenjit Dey, general secretary, Alipurduar Merchant Chamber of Commerce.

Some others however, prefer to wait, at least till commencement of the construction work and mentioned that around 11 years back, the then railway minister Mamata Banerjee had laid the foundation stone of a rail coach axle factory in New Jalpaiguri.

“There were similar hopes for employment as it was supposed to be the first such major investment by railways in north Bengal. However, the project has got delayed for more than a decade now,” said Pradip Dutta, a retired railway employee based in Alipurduar.