RailEnquiry

Muzaffarpur : Over 12 years in the making, one of the biggest railway projects of Bihar that connects Muzaffarpur to Sitamarhi by railway line got a blink-and-you-miss inauguration today. So low profile and devoid of hype was the event that the flagging off of the train was left to a JD(U) legislator, Arjun Rai, who had to endure the jeers of the crowd which taunted him for the delay in executing the task. The project of laying around 65km of tracks is estimated to have cost the railways Rs 450 crore. The project was conceived during the tenure of Ram Vilas Paswan as railway minister between 1996 and 1998. But it took off with a bang when Nitish Kumar took charge of the railway ministry in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 2001. Nitish, now the chief minister of Bihar, had sanctioned the funds for the project. But the project then went into the wilderness and took ages to complete even though Nitish was succeeded by another Bihari, Lalu Prasad, in the ministry. Nitish was nowhere to be seen today when the railway line was formally inaugurated with the flagging off of a passenger train from Runnisaidpur station in Sitamarhi district by Rai. The railways had completed construction of tracks from Runnisaidpur to Sitamarhi in April 2011. But the completion of the line from Muzaffarpur to Runnisaidpur took time owing to objections raised by villagers whose land had to be acquired for the project. For starters, two passenger trains will run between Muzaffarpur and Sitamarhi every day. For people residing in Sitamarhi, the inauguration of the track is a great relief. The 150-km journey by road from Muzaffarpur to Sitamarhi takes about six hours. "Now it will take just two hours. By road it often took six hours. During monsoon, the road gets breached by floodwater," said Manikant Singh, a resident of Sitamarhi town. Sitamarhi, located in the Indo-Nepal border region, is connected by rail with Samastipur and Darbhanga and the tracks go up to Narkatiaganj in East Champaran. However, thus far, it has remained without any rail link with Patna or Muzaffarpur.