With only rail route shut, Tripura to get foodgrain via Bangladesh
Landlocked Tripura is set to get its foodgrain supply from mainland India through sea, land and river routes via Bangladesh.
Such a move was necessitated with the monsoon rain lashing the state will be likely a six-month ‘mega block’ of the only rail link between Guwahati and Agartala from October.
The Food Corporation of India (FCI) will send 10,000 tonne of foodgrain — rice and wheat — as a pilot from Andhra Pradesh to Tripura via Bangladesh. The transportation is likely to take two weeks and if the “experiment works well”, then the process will continue for eight months.
Saumitra Bandopadhyaya, special secretary and director of food and civil supplies in the Tripura government, said the Ministry of External Affairs has already worked out the formalities with the Bangladesh regime to carry out smooth movement of the first consignment of 10,000 metric tonne of foodgrain.
“Once this experiment works well, we will be able to move our requirement through Bangladesh till the Lumding-Badarpur broad guage conversion work is completed by March-April 2015,” Bandopadhyaya told The Indian Express over phone.
The consignment will move in two barges from Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh by sea route and arrive at the Ashuganj river port on Meghna in Bangladesh, from where the foodgrain will be loaded on trucks bound to Agartala across the International Border check point at Akhaura, only 10 km from the Tripura capital.
With only rail route shut, Tripura to get foodgrain via Bangladesh | The Indian Express
Landlocked Tripura is set to get its foodgrain supply from mainland India through sea, land and river routes via Bangladesh.
Such a move was necessitated with the monsoon rain lashing the state will be likely a six-month ‘mega block’ of the only rail link between Guwahati and Agartala from October.
The Food Corporation of India (FCI) will send 10,000 tonne of foodgrain — rice and wheat — as a pilot from Andhra Pradesh to Tripura via Bangladesh. The transportation is likely to take two weeks and if the “experiment works well”, then the process will continue for eight months.
Saumitra Bandopadhyaya, special secretary and director of food and civil supplies in the Tripura government, said the Ministry of External Affairs has already worked out the formalities with the Bangladesh regime to carry out smooth movement of the first consignment of 10,000 metric tonne of foodgrain.
“Once this experiment works well, we will be able to move our requirement through Bangladesh till the Lumding-Badarpur broad guage conversion work is completed by March-April 2015,” Bandopadhyaya told The Indian Express over phone.
The consignment will move in two barges from Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh by sea route and arrive at the Ashuganj river port on Meghna in Bangladesh, from where the foodgrain will be loaded on trucks bound to Agartala across the International Border check point at Akhaura, only 10 km from the Tripura capital.
With only rail route shut, Tripura to get foodgrain via Bangladesh | The Indian Express