PM flags off train from Udhampur

After a long wait of 22 years, the Indian Railways chugged into the heart of Kashmir Valley today. The all-new Udhampur railway station, fro...

After a long wait of 22 years, the Indian Railways chugged into the heart of Kashmir Valley today. The all-new Udhampur railway station, from where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flagged off a Sampark Kranti Express to New Delhi on Wednesday, is the first stop in a phase-wise project to extend the link up to Baramulla in the next two years.

The 54-km track from Jammu, snaking along the Tawi river, gives passengers a bird’s eye view of Kashmir’s famed landscape. It goes over 36 major bridges and 22 tunnels, of which the tunnels account for over 10 km. Costing over Rs 515 crore, the project has been billed by the Railways as the world’s only broad-gauge railway line built at such a high altitude.

‘‘The frequent declarations that Kashmir is in the hearts of the people of India will be truer when the rest of the project gets completed and the Valley gets connected to the rest of the country by train,’’ Chief Minister Mufti Sayeed said at the inauguration.

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Late PM Indira Gandhi had laid the foundation of this project in 1983. But it got held up for years, partly due to technical difficulties, and partially due to the militancy problem in the Valley. With the Jammu-Udhampur track now open, work is on in the rest of the line, which from Udhampur to Baramulla is a 287-km stretch on difficult terrain.

The project has been divided into three sections with the 25-km stretch to Katra involving the construction of more tunnels and bridges. Scheduled for completion by the end of next year, the work, according to railways officials, has been held up due to structural problems in one tunnel. The stretch from Katra to Qazigund, 142 km, has been billed as the most difficult part of the project, with more than 89 km in tunnels and a 1.2 km-long bridge across Chenab at a height of 390 metres.

Interestingly, though the PM declared that the project would be over by 2007, Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav and other Railway officials admitted that this could happen only by August 2008. The last section of the project includes a 120-km route from Qazigund to Baramulla, which has to tackle the Jhelum and its tributaries.

The train will run thrice a week from New Delhi to Udhampur, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, departing at 8.30 pm and reaching at 7.50 am the next day. The train will leave Udhampur at 6.40 pm on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, reaching New Delhi at 6 am.

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Militants claim to have list of passengers of next bus

Srinagar: Four militant groups, who had threatened people against taking the inaugural Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus, on Wednesday claimed to have the list of the next batch of passengers and warned them against boarding the bus on April 21.

‘‘The list of passengers on the second bus is being sent to the media so that they can be warned against undertaking the journey in this coffin,’’ a statement quoting Samir Abdullah, joint spokesman of Al-Nasireen, Al-Arifeen, Save Kashmir Movement and Farzandan-e-Millat, said here. ‘‘The prospective passengers are hereby forewarned that they should not endanger their lives by boarding the bus,’’ he said.

The presence of the list with the militants contradicts the claims of CM Mufti Mohammad Sayeed that there was no leakage of information from the government side, the statement said. — PTI