Ahmed, who is on a six-day tour of India, was speaking to the media at Gede in Nadia. He travelled by helicopter to Gede, the last station on the Indian side of the border, after reaching Kolkata from New Delhi in the morning. Ahmed, accompanied by other senior army officials and diplomats, also met Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at Writers’ Buildings on Friday.
He stressed the train service will resume after taking into account all relevant border security issues. Once started, the train will ply between Sealdah station in Kolkata and Dhaka, covering the 345-km journey in 12 hours.
Ahmed’s trip to Gede follows the three-day meeting of the India-Bangladesh Intergovernmental Committee of Railways, which got underway in New Delhi on February 25. According to the agreement reached in the meeting, both India and Bangladesh will run the train for six months each.
On their part, Eastern Railways authorities maintained they’re ready with the infrastructure to resume the service. Chief Public Relations Officer Deepak Jha said the service could be made available given an advance notice of 15 days. “The decision to begin the service is with Government of India. When we get the signal, we’ll come into the picture.”
Ahmed’s trip to Gede signals a turnaround in Dhaka’s policy, as the erstwhile Bangaldesh National Party (BNP) government had stalled the resumption of rail links by objecting to India’s proposal for fencing the 800-m area between Darsana station in Bangladesh and Gede on security grounds. An initial attempt at re-establishing links had been taken during the end of the Awami League government’s tenure in 2000-01, before Khaleda Zia’s BNP came to power.
While Indian security agencies had pointed out that the train will not be allowed to cover the 800-m area without proper security checks, the Bangladesh government had said they didn’t favour fencing. Instead, Dhaka proposed a special checkpoint at Darsana, which didn’t meet Indian security concerns.
Now, the caretaker Fakhruddin Ahmed government in Dhaka seems to have agreed to India’s proposal of a cage-like enclosure on the area concerned for holding security checks. This decision could be the result of Dhaka’s nod to smoke out Indian militants using Bangladeshi territory as refuge.
In July last year, both sides had conducted trial runs following secretary-level talks in Dhaka. Indian Railways had run a train from Kolkata to Gede to check passenger facilities and security aspects, while a trial train called Moitree Express had travelled from Dhaka Cantonment station to Chitpur station in Kolkata.
During the talks, India had proposed two trips every week — travelling from Kolkata to Dhaka on Saturday and the return journey on Sunday. However, Bangladesh officials wanted four such trips every week.