Underground rail link along ‘Chicken’s Neck’ will ensure secure route to NE, says Himanta

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday said the proposed underground rail link along the strategic ‘Chicken’s Neck’ corridor in West Bengal will ensure a secure transportation route, connecting the Northeast.

He said the “strategic vulnerability” of the narrow strip of land should have been addressed in the aftermath of 1971.

“This is BIG. For decades, the ‘Chicken’s Neck’ has been used as an intimidation tactic by anti-national forces, both within and beyond our borders,” Sarma said in a post on X. “The proposed underground rail link marks a major strategic breakthrough, creating a secure and foolproof transportation corridor between the North East and the rest of the country,” he added.

Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had on Monday said plans are afoot to lay underground railway tracks along the 40-km strategic corridor and also make the existing tracks four-line. The strategic corridor, called the ‘Chicken’s Neck’ for its shape, is a strip of land located in northern West Bengal’s Siliguri area, having a width of over 20 km. The strip is sandwiched between Nepal and Bangladesh, with Bhutan and China a few hundred kilometres away.

Thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Vaishnaw for the decision, Sarma said, “...We are taking a giant step towards mitigating this long-standing strategic vulnerability - one that, in hindsight, should have been addressed much earlier, perhaps even in the aftermath of 1971.”

Sarma had earlier said that then PM Indira Gandhi “could have asked to expand the Chicken’s Neck corridor” after the 1971 war. “She could have redrawn the map for NE’s straight access to the rest of the country and not remain dependent on the ‘Chicken’s Neck’ corridor,” he had said.

The CM had also held that if India’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru had not “bartered Chittagong port” with a portion of Punjab with Pakistan during Partition, the Northeast would not have been dependent on the ‘Chicken’s Neck’.

The proposed underground lines will be between Tin Mile Haat and Rangapani railway stations in West Bengal, Northeast Frontier Railway officials said. One of the lines will go towards Bagdogra in West Bengal, vital for the air defence mechanism of the country, they said.