Bangladesh and India will restore direct passenger train services within the next three months after a gap of more than four decades, an official said Sunday, adding technical work has already begun.
"We will start passenger train services between Joydevpur near Dhaka and Sealdah in (the eastern Indian city of) Kolkata within the next two to three months," Bangladesh Railway official Kazi Asadullah said.
"We are waiting for a formal announcement of the resumption date by the two governments," he said, adding that the re-launch of the service was decided at a meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries last month. Rail service was suspended in 1965 during a war between India and Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh, formerly known as East Pakistan.
India was partitioned at independence from British rule in 1947 mainly along religious lines with Muslims divided by thousands of kilometres (miles) into an east and west Pakistan.
But citizens in the former Bengal state resisted control by the military-led government in Islamabad and sought independence which was aided by Indian forces capturing Dhaka as part of a broader war on the subcontinent.
While passenger services were halted after the war, cargo between the countries has continued and in the 1990s a passenger bus service was launched between Dhaka and Kolkata which share the Bengali language in common.
The passenger train service is aimed at improving those links, Asadullah said.
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