Calcutta: A passenger train service between Calcutta and Khulna, Bangladesh, will be launched on November 9.

The Bandhan Express, which will leave Calcutta station every Thursday, will have the BSF escorting it on the India leg.

Customs and immigration checks will be done at the station. It will take close to five hours to cover the 185km to Khulna.

The Bengal GRP received a letter from the railway chief security commissioner, V.K. Dhaka, on November 1, saying the train service would start from Calcutta station in Chitpore on November 9.

Harinder Rao, general manager, Eastern Railway, visited Calcutta station with Dhaka on Monday to inspect the launch arrangements.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will launch the train through videoconference," a railway official said. "Chief minister Mamata Banerjee will join the conference from Nabanna."

The move to have the BSF escorting the train has triggered allegations that the Centre is keeping the state administration out of the loop on the new friendship drive between the two countries.

Two meetings - the first in March and the other in August - were held in Delhi in connection with the launch, a home department official said.

The final meeting, held at the Eastern Railway headquarters in Calcutta on October 31, was attended by customs, railway and ministry (external affairs and home) officials. The GRP wasn't there.

The external affairs ministry apparently took the call on the BSF after consulting the home ministry, a railway official said.

The BSF will escort a train till the eastern border for the first time. "We had said the RPF was doing a great job with the Maitree Express. But the Centre chose the BSF," he said.

P.S.R. Anjaneyulu, IG, South Bengal Frontier, BSF, said the Centre had directed the force to escort the train. "We will do it."

The Maitree Express, which runs between Calcutta and Dhaka, has the RPF escorting it on the onward journey till the border and the Bengal GRP on the return journey.

A Calcutta-Dhaka-Khulna bus service was launched in April.