New Delhi : Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Saturday announced a bullet train project that would connect Delhi with Siliguri, the gateway to the northeast. Vaishnaw said it would reduce the travel time to just six hours from the present 20 hours. Vaishnaw, who visited Kolkata and also took a metro ride, praised Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari for the election win and “saving Bengal” from the Trinamool Congress, which he accused of delaying key projects.
“Congratulations on the way you have saved Bengal. Now you can work. For so many years, development work was stopped here,” Vaishnaw told Suvendu, widely seen as the architect behind the BJP’s turnaround in the state. “Just as we have provided land to the BSF to strengthen border security, we will similarly provide land to the Railways for various projects across West Bengal,” the Bengal CM said.
Vaishnaw said the Kolkata Metro would receive 60 new-generation trains over the next five years. He also said that 102 stations in Bengal were being redeveloped under the Amrit Bharat scheme. Here, it must be noted that Kolkata Metro is the only rapid transit system in India that is fully owned and operated by the Railways.
“Projects valued at around Rs 1.02 lakh crore have been pending implementation for a long time… You may recall the case of the metro project at Chingrighata, where the TMC government pursued legal challenges all the way to the Supreme Court,” Vaishnaw said. “Their attitude was not to allow any development works,” he further said.Vaishnaw pointed out that Kolkata Metro, India’s first metro rail system, added only 28 km of network in the 42 years between 1972 and 2014.
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