New Delhi, Oct 27 : Government today said the over 10,000 kilometres of metre gauge railway lines in the country including North East will be phased out over the next 4-5 years by converting them into broad gauge.
Replying to supplementaries during Question Hour in Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Railways R Velu said there were 49,819.44 km of broad gauge rail lines in the country and 10,621.38 km of metre gauge lines.“In 4-5 years, all the metre gauge lines are to be phased out,” he said.
The North East has 2,365 km of railway lines, the Minister said while admitting that the region was lagging behind in rail connectivity.
Ten new railway line projects have been sanctioned for North East to connect seven States. The projects include Jiribam-Imphal link, Kumarghat-Agartala line, Azara-Byrnihat, Dimapur-Zubza (Kohima), Dudhnoi-Depa (Meghalaya), Harmuti-Itanagar (Arunachal Pradesh and Assam), Agartala-Sabroom (Tripura) and Bhairabi-Sairang (Mizoram).
Besides, gauge conversion work has been taken up at five lines in the region, he said.
While route km per lakh of population in NE compares favourably with the average in the rest of India, route km per thousand square km area in the region was low.
North East had an average of 6.06 km of rail line per lakh of population as compared to the national average of 6.16 km. However, it had only 9.02 km per thousand square km area as opposed to the national average of 19.26 km line per thousand square km, he said.
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