Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday morning flagged off eastern India’s first semi high-speed Vande Bharat Express train from Howrah station and launched development projects worth over Rs 7,800 crore in the State.
Considered primarily a tourist and business class train linking Kolkata to State’s second most important city Siliguri and hill stations Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Mirik and Peling apart from Sikkim and the North East, the train will take about an hour less than the Shatabdi Express to reach NJP. It will run six days a week between Howrah and New Jalpaiguri.
Bengal Chief Minister Mamat Banerjee, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav and Bengal Governor CV Anand Bose were present during theprogramme when the train was virtually green-signalled by the PM.
The blue-and-white train resembling its high-speed cousins from Japan, France, China et al Vande Bharat will cover 564 km in 7.45 hours and stop at Bolpur Shantiniketan which has memories of Rabindranath Tagore, Malda the ancient capital of Gaur Vanga and Barsoi junction that joins Bihar’s Katihar division and Bengal.
The PM, who was scheduled to visit Kolkata, had to attend the programme virtually as he had to rush to Ahmedabad following the demise of his mother Heraben Mod.
The PM who virtually launched development projects worth Rs 7,800 crore was to visit Kolkata to take part in Ganga council meet attended amongst others by the Chief Ministers of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Bengal through which the mighty river flows. While speaking after inaugurating new Taratala-Joka metro service in southern fringes of Kolkata Modi referred to Bengal as the fountain-head of freedom struggle. “We started from Vande Mataram and today we have reached up to Vande Bharat," he said.
Informing that the Centre was making record investments to modernise
the Indian Railways and that in next eight years, India would see
railways on a new journey of modernisation, Modi said “now modern
trains like Vande Bharat express, Tejas express and Humsafar express
are being made in India … The Indian Railways have established a
global identity… (where) The modern electric engines of India are
going global”. Saying that "infrastructure and transport were major limitations to India's progress,” Modi said, how the PM Gati Shakti master plan was brought to solve these challenges.”
The Bengal Chief Minister who had conceived the Joka metro project
during her speech established her own claim over the projects saying
“during her tenure as the Railway Minister she had planned this project and even started it.