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NEW DELHI: India has announced its first-ever cross-border railway project with Bhutan, slated to connect the landlocked mountainous neighbor with its nearly 70,000-km railway network in four years.

The $454 million project will connect the eastern Indian states of Assam and West Bengal to two towns in Bhutan. Together, the lines will cover a total distance of 89 km.

The project agreement was signed on Monday evening by Bhutan’s Foreign Secretary Pema Choden and Indian Railway Board CEO Satish Kumar.

“The construction period will be about four years for this project. All the land schedules, everything has already been done … And very soon, we’ll start the construction work,” India’s Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told reporters in New Delhi.

“Both goods and passengers will be using these two lines … The entire area will get connected. And lots of goods’ movement, which takes days today, will start happening in a few hours.”

Vaishnaw said that in the first $390 million phase of the project, Assam’s Kokrajhar will be linked to Gelephu — a special zone developed as a smart city — a route spanning 69 km and six stations.

In the second phase, West Bengal’s Banarhat will connect to the agricultural and industrial district of Samtse via separate rail lines. The 20-km railway line will have two stations.

The establishment of the cross-border lines was agreed during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Thimphu in 2024. It will be entirely funded by the Indian government.

Bhutan does not have a railway network, and the links to India will be its first such connections.

With an area of 34,400 sq. km and a population of less than 800,000, Bhutan is landlocked between India to the south, east, and west, and China to the north.

India is the largest trading partner of Bhutan, with bilateral duty-free transit for goods accounting for nearly 80 percent of its trade. The connection will further link it to India’s two other neighbors, Bangladesh and Nepal.

The rail line will join the Fulbari Corridor near Siliguri, a hub linking India’s northeastern states with the rest of the country and the Bangladeshi border.

“The four countries would be meeting at that particular point known as Fulbari … And this corridor would lead straight away to Chittagong Port, Mongla Port, and a new port, which is being developed by Japan, known as Matarbari Deep Sea Port,” Prof. Mahendra P. Lama, development economist from Jawaharlal Nehru University, told Arab News.

“The idea is to integrate Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh and India in a sub-regionalism process … so Bhutan can access Bangladeshi ports from the Assamese side (Northeast Frontier), and from the Bengal side, that is Fulbari.”

The increased connectivity will have an impact on the whole region.

“This is something very new, and we are now trying to open Arunachal Pradesh–Myanmar connectivity through the Second World War route known as the Stillwell Road,” Prof. Lama said.

“This will be something big and far-reaching, a win-win situation for all four countries, with many expected commercial, cultural, and socioeconomic benefits.”