Bangladesh has moved to develop rail corridors with India for trans-border train connectivity to facilitate trade and investment under the BBIN bloc.
Officials said as part of the move, Bangladesh Railway has undertaken several projects to reestablish railway link through Chilahati and Birol-Radhikapur borders which are to connect with Bhutan and Nepal respectively.
They said a project to convert the meter-gauge rail track to broad-gauge one from Dinajpur to Birol-Radhikapur point has already been under implementation.
But a new proposal to resume rail link between Chilahati of Nilphamari district and Holdibari of JAlpaiguri of India has been mooted for facilitating connectivity with Bhutan, one of the four nations in the Bangladesh-Bhutan-India- Nepal (BBIN) bloc.
Bangladesh and India have seven railway interchange points, of which three are now under operation. Of the four closure points, Chilahati-Holdibari interchange remained suspended since 1965-the year when India and Pakistan fought a war.
BR officials said under the new project, 7.5-kilometre broad-gauge rail track will be set up inside Bangladesh while India will have to construct a 5.0-km stretch within its territory to reach Hasimara, the border with Bhutan.
Though Bhutan and Nepal do not have rail connectivity within their territories, the officials said, the plan was taken to facilitate freights through multimodal way.
"If we could reach goods to Indian borders, any goods could be transported to the two Himalayan countries by road from there," said an official involved with the projects.
He said Nepal has already taken up a project to establish 25-kilometre rail line from Biratnagar to Zogobani after developing an inland container terminal at Biratnagar recently.
However, it is learnt that the Indian side has no project yet to develop missing link of rails inside its territory from Chilahati.
Another source said the government is interested in reestablishing rail connectivity with India by reviving all five routes for boosting regional trade.
The routes are Benapole-Bangaon, Birol-Radhikapur, Banglabandha-Shiliguri-Nepal, Akhaura-Agartala, and Khulna-Kolkata.
A meeting held at the Prime Minister's Office in April also stressed the need for undertaking rail-connectivity projects like Radhikapur (India)-Birol (Bangladesh), Chilahati (Bangladesh)-Haldibari (India), Shahbazpur (Bangladesh)-Mahisasan (India), Akhaura (Bangladesh)-Agartala (India) and Feni (Bangladesh)-Belonia (India).
The BR official said freight trade between Bangladesh and India has been carried out through Benapole and Rohonpur. But limited goods are also carried through Rohonpur-Singhabad route which is connected with Jogobani on the India-Nepal border.
The BR has already taken project to establish Akhaura-Laksam dual-gauge rail track as well as Akhaura-Agartala rail link to facilitate train movement within northeastern India.
Though BBIN is an initiative to establish seamless movement of all modes of transport within the four South Asian countries after the signing of Motor Vehicle Agreement by the four nations' transport ministers on June 15, 2015, the initiative has been tried to be made popular by different quarters, including business community, to facilitate trade and business in the contiguous region.
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