Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi will tomorrow jointly launch a new passenger train service between Kolkata and Bangladesh’s southwestern industrial city of Khulna, officials said on Wednesday. “The train would be dubbed as ‘Bandhan Express’ and it will operate on the 177-km-long Khulna-Kolkata route. The cross-country service would start ferrying passengers from November 16,” a Bangladesh railway spokesman said.
As per the schedule, it would leave Kolkata at 11 am (Indian time) and reach Khulna after four-and-a-half-hour-long journey.
Officials in the Bangladesh PMO said the two premiers will inaugurate the service through video-conferencing. They will also launch two railway bridges, built with Indian line of credit, and an “end-to-end” immigration facility to ease Dhaka-Kolkata ‘Maitree’ train services, they added. At present, Indians going to Bangladesh or Bangladeshis visiting India have to complete the immigration process at Darshana station in Bangladesh and at India’s Gede point, where they have to wait for hours. The two new bridges have been built on Bhairab and Titas rivers for second track for simultaneous operation of up and down train services from Dhaka to southeastern Chitt-agong and northeastern Sylhet.