Railways' grain trains to bail out NE States
Source: The Sangai Express / TNN

Meerut/Bijnor, August 07 2016 : The Indian Railways has begun a massive exercise to send foodgrains to the flood-hit North Eastern States and has cancelled many passenger trains while pressing its staff into service to reach relief to people in the region.

The crisis, according to officials, was compounded by two events happening together.

While the 45-day strike of labourers in the Punjab zone of Food Corporation of India (FCI), which facilitates transport of grains to different states, created severe bottlenecks, movement of trucks on two arterial National Highways � NH-8, that connects Assam with Tripura, and NH-2, which connects Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram with the rest of the country � has been affected for weeks due to one of the worst-ever floods in Assam.

Moradabad divisional railway manager Pramod Kumar told TOI on Saturday: "In all, 900 trainloads of foodgrains have to be cleared from our division alone to bring the situation back to normal.

Because of this pressure, 15 passenger trains in the division had to be discontinued to keep the tracks relatively free." Kumar added, "We had to cancel local trains and deploy its staff on goods trains bound for NE States.

We are expecting to compete this task in 45 days and the local trains would be reinstated after that." The biggest loading points for grains in the Northern Railway zone are Ferozepur in Punjab and Ambala in Haryana.

The grain trains that go to the North Eastern States as well as Bihar pass through the Moradabad division.

Kumar also said that on an average 35 goods trains pass through the division but owing to this pressure, close to 55 are being given passage.

According to officials, the railways will send 20 extra goods trains each day carrying a total of 93,000 metric tonnes of food grains to the affected States.

It hopes to complete the task of sending 900 pending trainloads of grains in 45 days- with a total of 42 lakh metric tonnes of supplies.

In the first week of July, stretches of the highway south of Karimganj suffered extensive damage from floodwaters of the Barak river and its tributaries.

By July 4, more than 5,000 trucks carrying essential commodities to Tripura were stranded on the Assam stretch of the highway.

Communication on the road has been partially restored but movement of heavy vehicles has been restricted since then.

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