Indian Railways shares an update on the Dimapur-Kohima railway project. Details here

Indian Railways in its mission to connect all the capitals of the north-eastern states in the country has shared the progress report on the work going on to bring Kohima, the capital of Nagaland on the map of the Indian Railways network.

The project of BG line connectivity from Dimapur (Dhansiri) - Zubza (Kohima) (82.50 km) (suburban city of Kohima, the Capital city of Nagaland) in Nagaland was sanctioned in 2006-07.

Indian Railways in a tweet stated that three tunnels have been completed while three are under the advanced stage while 14 tunnels are at mobilisation stage.

Likewise sharing the data on bridges Indian Railways stated that Major- Superstructure: 4 complete, 8 in progress, Substructure: 11 complete, 8 in progress and Minor- 134 of 198 completed. It also stated that three stations are constructed and two are in progress.

The construction work has been taken up throughout the length of project. For complete commission of the project, the work of acquiring balance land in 8 km length has been taken up (ownership disputes). Target for completion for complete project is 3 years after complete land is handed over to Railways.

Meanwhile, great emphasis has been given by Central Government towards quick execution of infrastructure and safety projects and funding for infrastructure projects has increased considerably on Indian Railways.

In Arunachal Pradesh, a BG railway line was commissioned in February, 2015 upto Naharlagun (suburban city of Itanagar) and first Broad Gauge (BG) train was started on 20.02.2015 from Naharlagun (Itanagar) to New Delhi.

Long pending and delayed work of Bogibeel Bridge on Brahmaputra river was completed in 2018 leading to a further reduction of rail travel distance from Dibrugarh to Naharlagun (Itanagar) by 705 km (via Guwahati).

First BG trial train to the State of Tripura (Agartala) was started on 13.01.2016 and first BG passenger train (long distance) was introduced to Delhi on 31.07.2016.

In some States, the progress of new line projects of Capital connectivity has been affected mainly due to delay in land acquisition and law & order issues. All these Capital connectivity projects being in hilly terrain of Himalayas involve large number of tunnels and major bridges including very tall bridges in a very challenging geological environment.

Works of new BG lines have been taken up by Railway through Government of India fund to connect the remaining Capitals of North Eastern States i.e. Meghalaya (Shillong), Manipur (Imphal), Nagaland (Kohima), Mizoram (Aizawl) and Sikkim (Gangtok). Detail with present status of these projects are as under: