Samsul Alam
Haflong, Sept. 14: The North Cachar Hills Autonomous Council is planning to convert the abandoned Lumding-Silchar metre-gauge track into a road to connect Haflong with Silchar in south Assam.”We have decided to construct an alternative route by converting the metre-gauge track into a jeepable road. We will take up the matter with the state government and the railway authorities,” Nironjon Hojai, executive member of the council and in-charge of public works department, told reporters here yesterday.”If the project is successful, it will take a maximum of three hours to reach Silchar from Haflong which now takes around five to six hours,” Hojai added.The council has decided to convert the track because National Highway 54(E), which connects Haflong with Silchar, is in a deplorable condition and its conversion into a four-way lane is yet to start.
The 30km stretch between Jatinga and Harangajoa on the Haflong-Silchar route of NH 54(E) was allotted to JKM & NKC, construction companies working in a joint venture, in 2010-11 fiscal to convert it into a four-way lane. JKM has recently withdrawn from the work, following which the condition of the road has become worse.The 115-year-old Lumding-Silchar metre-gauge track was abandoned on October 1, 2015 after the NF Railway started converting another track into a broad-gauge one.Hojai said the council would take up the matter of four-laning NH 54(E) with the National Highways Authority of India as well as the state and Union governments.On the demand for preserving the Harangajao-Mahur metre-gauge track as a heritage line, he said they wanted to do so “but for now it is important to create an alternative route connecting Silchar with its neighbouring states.”On some BJP members in the council joining the AGP, its executive member Prakanta Warisa, who is in charge of education, dismissed it as “rumours spread by the opposition parties”.
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