Harvinder Ahuja
THE dream that India had seen over three decades ago is about to come true – well, almost! After several extensions, the Delhi-Srinagar direct rail link is scheduled to be inaugurated later this month, but it won’t be ‘direct’ per se. Passengers boarding the much-touted Vande Bharat train late evening from New Delhi will have to alight in the middle of night at Katra station in Jammu province and board another ‘sanitised’ train that will take them to Srinagar, and further on to Baramulla, in the beautiful Valley of Kashmir.
Besides facing the hassle of getting on to a less swanky coach of another train, the shifting and security-scan of the luggage during dark hours of the night will be a cumbersome and painful exercise. Moreover, the symbolic advantage of a direct train travel, that too in the luxury of a Vande Bharat coach, gets lost. Also in the process, yet another attempt to bridge psychological gulf between Kashmir and the rest of India goes slightly off track.
CM’s turnaround
Not without reason, the initial euphoria in Kashmir about the direct train has toned down and a verbal slugfest has begun among the politicians. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who had earlier sided with the Railways’ decision to switch trains for security reasons, has now changed tack. After the Opposition slammed him and asserted that the changeover will defeat the very purpose of providing ‘a direct rail connectivity’ to Kashmir, he came up with another statement.
“Just to remove any chance of any misunderstanding, while we understand the need to secure the train & the passengers who will travel using it, making passengers change trains will defeat the very purpose of the line and render the thousands of crores of investment pointless,” the Chief Minister posted. Media reports quoted his latest statement further: “Check the train/passengers in Katra or Jammu sure but NO change of train will be supported by us. That said, there is no concrete proposal & when there is, we will give our inputs/suggestions.”
Horticulture, tourism
Locals, who all along had great expectations with the arrival of rail service to the Kashmir Valley, are disheartened. The business community, according to media reports, has requested the Central Government to reconsider its decision. It has said if there is no train directly connecting the Kashmir Valley to the rest of the country, it will impact the horticulture and tourism sectors. Traders are worried about what happens to their fruit consignments as they claim that one of the key reasons behind the push for a direct rail link was that it would help the horticulture industry.
With 38 tunnels totalling 119 km, including the country’s biggest transportation tunnel T-49, the ambitious Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) project is, undoubtedly, an engineering marvel. Also featuring 927 bridges, including the world’s highest arch railway bridge standing 359 metres above the riverbed, the USBRL is a robust testimony to India’s engineering prowess. No effort should be spared to ensure that the fruition of this highly ambitious project spreads cheer all across the country.
