Transport initiatives in North Eastern states

Shillong, May 8 (UNI) Infrastructure, specially transport infrastructure, is crucial for the socio-economic development of the North Eastern states.

Improvement of transport infrastructure would necessitate a concerted and multi-pronged action covering all modes of transport in the region like roads, railways, civil aviation and inland water transportation.

Recognising the criticality of developing the vast road network in the North Eastern Region(NER), various road development programmes, including Special Accelerated Road Development Project (SARDP)-North East, would be taken up at an accelerated pace, an official statement said here today.

These schemes, apart from augmenting the capacity of high density corridors, will result in provision of improved four lane or two lane (with paved shoulders) National Highway link to all state capitals. In addition, all district headquarters will be connected through National Highways system either directly through two-lane National Highway or two-lane state road facility.

High priority is being accorded for converting the arterial network of Railways to Broad Gauge (BG) and almost the entire Meter Gauge (MG) network in the region will be converted to BG during the 11th Five Year Plan period. Action will be taken to provide rail link to Meghalaya and Sikkim. With this, all the North Eastern states will be linked with BG line. Efforts will also be made to provide rail link to all state capitals of the NER.

Construction of three greenfield airports at Pakyong in Sikkim, Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh and Cheithu in Kohima should be completed expeditiously. All state capitals in the region would have air connectivity. As a part of modernisation of airports in the country, 4 airports in the North East (Guwahati, Dimapur, Agartala and Imphal) are proposed to be modernised. With a view to improving intra-regional connectivity, the infrastructure facilities at various airports would be strengthened and air services augmented.

In order to harness the maximum potential of Inland Water as an ideal mode of transport for low value, high volume commodities, River Brahmaputra National Waterway 2, which provides trunk route connectivity to the region, will be made fully functional.

UNI