By March 2023, Aizawl will be linked to India’s railway grid, making Mizoram the fourth of the eight north-eastern States to get railway connectivity.
A statement issued by the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) said ₹1,000-crore has been allocated for the 2021-22 fiscal to be spent on the Bairabi-Sairang railway project that the Railway Ministry wants completed within the next two years. State capital Aizawl is 18 km uphill of Sairang.
The distance between Bairabi, a railhead in Mizoram’s Kolasib district close to the border with Assam, and Sairang uphill is about 51 km.
“The Bairabi-Sairang project was sanctioned in 2008-09. The anticipated cost of the 51.38 km project is about ₹5521.45-crore. Till last year, ₹3763.6-core has been spent on the project,” an NFR statement said.
“There will be 55 major and 87 minor bridges in the entire project. It will also have five road over bridges and six road under bridges. There will be several tunnels with a total length of 12,639.20 metres,” the statement added.
Northeast Frontier Railway has been working on a project to link all State capitals in the region. So far, the capitals of three north-eastern States have railway connectivity. These are Dispur (Assam), Agartala (Tripura) and Itanagar (Arunachal).
