AGARTALA/ NEW DELHI, June 1 (TIWN): Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) General Manager H.K Jaggi visted Agartala Railway Station, visited Broad Gauge (BG) tracks on Wednesday to take stock of ongoing BG express train service preparation beween Agartala to Silchar sector. NFR Railways already started goods train service from Agartala to Silchar sector, trial run of passenger trains scheduled to begin from June’16 itself. Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu likely to inaugurate BG Express Train service if BG line works gets done as per schedule. Agartala- Silchar sector, Lumding area railway tracks need more work as incessant rains collapsed tracks in multiple places. Modi government has commissioned 1,780 km of rail lines and also completed over 6,000 km of highways in 2015-16 period, the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement on Monday.Another NFR official told that the prime minister was scheduled to lay the foundation stone of the Agartala-Akhaura (Bangladesh) railway project and flag off regular passenger train service from Agartala to Sealdah, and Agartala to Silchar on the newly-laid broad gauge line. But these events likely to be held in June in Agartala.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was reviewing the progress in the key infrastructure sectors of railways and roadways on Monday. The PMO said that 1,730 km of rail links have also been electrified in 2015-16. 

In the course of the review of the railway sector, it was noted that it had received a capital investment of over Rs.93,000 crore in the last fiscal. 

“This represents a massive increase of 65 percent over the previous year, and is the highest-ever investment in railways in one year. The figures also represent the best performance on these metrics in railway history,” the statement said. 

It added that the prime minister has stressed the need to speed up the redevelopment of railway stations and has urged the ministry to upgrade and diversify the uses of its infrastructure.

In the meeting, Prime Minister Modi was informed that over 6,000 km of highways have been completed in 2015-16, while contracts for 10,098 km were awarded in the same period.

Modi has also stressed the need to decongest the critical highways by adopting latest technologies for toll collection.

He has asked the officials from the union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways to study various models of road development across the country and adopt the best practices so that more private investment can be brought into the highway construction sector. 

The Rs.968-crore Agartala-Akhaura (5 km on the Indian side and 10 km on Bangladesh) railway project was finalised in January 2010 when Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina met the then prime minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi.

Subsequently, Modi discussed the railway project with Sheikh Hasina during his visit to Dhaka in June 2015.