Mizoram's Railway Revolution: How Sairang Line Connects to Myanmar's Kaladan Project

A Raj Bhavan official said that the Governor, while speaking with a visiting media team, expressed confidence that the stretch between the Sairang railway line near Aizawl and Kaladan will be completed smoothly.

Highlighting the ongoing developmental initiatives in Mizoram, Gen Singh (retd) described the recently inaugurated 51.38-km Bairabi-Sairang railway line as a game-changer for Mizoram.

The 51.38-kilometre-long Bairabi (near southern Assam)–Sairang section was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Aizawl on September 13.

A senior official of the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) said that the project showcases exceptional engineering, comprising 45 tunnels, 143 bridges (including one taller than Delhi’s Qutub Minar), and four new stations at Hortoki, Kawnpui, Mualkhang, and Sairang.

He said the Bairabi-Sairang new rail line project marks a historic milestone for the Northeast, providing rail connectivity to the capital of Mizoram, for the first time -- effectively integrating the state into India's railway grid.

"Despite extremely challenging terrain and adverse weather, the Northeast Frontier Railway (Construction) team successfully executed this complex project, which will boost trade, tourism, and socio-economic development across Mizoram and the wider Northeast," the NFR official said.

Currently, four Northeastern state capitals -- Dispur (near Guwahati) in Assam, Agartala in Tripura, Naharlagun near Arunachal Pradesh's capital Itanagar, and Sairang near Mizoram’s capital Aizawl -- are connected by rail.

Work is underway to link Imphal, the capital of Manipur and Kohima, the capital of Nagaland, to the national rail network.

The NFR would link the Myanmar border by rail through Manipur and Mizoram, the official said. He said that while the final location survey of the 111 km Imphal-Moreh (along the Myanmar border) section is already underway for the construction of a new broad gauge line, it would construct a broad gauge line from Sairang to Hmawngbuchhuah in Mizoram's Lawngtlai district, near the Myanmar border.

As the 223-km Sairang- Hmawngbuchhuah railway project had been abandoned earlier due to "economic non-viability", the Mizoram government and parliament members from the state had been demanding that it be revived, and they held a series of meetings with the officials of the NFR at Guwahati and Delhi.

The NFR official said that even though the proposed railway line from Sairang to Hmawngbuchhuah is an "economically not feasible", the project would be revived as it is strategically important to connect northeast India with the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project in Myanmar under the Act East Policy. According to a preliminary survey, the estimated cost of the proposed 223-km railway project is Rs 15,000 crore.

"The final survey for the project is being delayed due to the internal situation in Myanmar, which is currently governed by a military junta," the NFR official said.

- IANS