Amid threats to ‘chicken’s neck’, India to take rail corridor underground

GUWAHATI: India’s program to unafraid the strategical “chicken’s neck” corridor to the Northeast from Bengal includes laying underground obstruction tracks done the astir 40km agelong flanked by Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh, railway curate Ashwini Vaishnaw said Monday.Vaishnaw said the Budget contains a connection to grow railway nexus betwixt the portion and the remainder of the state to 4 tracks, fulfilling a long-felt need. Northeast Frontier Railway GM Chetan Shrivastava said the underground agelong would tally from Tin Mile Haat to Rangapani stations wrong Bengal.Decision to instrumentality the tracks underground stems from threats — overt and covert — to people the chicken’s neck, which is hardly 25km wide astatine the narrowest point.

Concerns implicit the corridor, being seen arsenic India’s Achilles heel, grew aft the autumn of Hasina govt successful Bangladesh, with immoderate groups speaking astir “choking the chicken’s neck” to chopped disconnected the Northeast. Voices person framed the portion arsenic portion of their imaginativeness of a “greater Bangladesh”.

Dhaka’s outreach towards China is different reddish flag.During the 2017 Doklam stand-off, subject planners had talked astir the vulnerability of the Siliguri agelong of the corridor. Any disruption present could isolate NE, severing proviso lines and impeding question of troops.“Taking the tracks underground is portion of the strategy to guarantee connectivity adjacent successful times of crises,” an authoritative said.