India - first Kashmir train service launched

[John Ashworth]

1. PM launches Kashmir train service
BBC
Page last updated at 08:09 GMT, Saturday, 11 October 2008 09:09 UK

India's prime minister has inaugurated Kashmir's first train service, amid heavy security and following protests that left two people dead.

Manmohan Singh flagged off the first train after a low-key ceremony at Nowgam station.

On Friday, he inaugurated a dam built in the disputed region despite protests from Pakistan.

At least 75 people were also hurt in protests on Friday and separatists have called a two-day strike.

Some 30 people have been killed in clashes with security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir since August amid growing anti-India protests.

Kashmir has been a flashpoint between India and Pakistan for more than 50 years and the scene of two of their three wars. A Muslim separatist insurgency has been waged since 1989.

'Dream come true'

Mr Singh was joined at Nowgam by the Congress party's president, Sonia Gandhi, Railway Minister Laloo Prasad and about 100 leaders and former legislators belonging to various pro-India political parties.

Mr Singh said: "Our intention is that the future of Kashmir should be socially, economically and politically bright."

Many Kashmiris also welcomed the train link.

One villager from Baramulla, Mushtaq Ahmed, told AFP news agency: "It is a dream come true for us. I have never seen a train in my life. I will try to be the first from my village to board one."

The inaugural train, decorated with flowers, carried school children.

The line will link the town of Rajwansher in the north with Anantnag in the south, a distance of 72km (44 miles).

It will be extended next year to 117km (73 miles) to Baramullah and Qazigund. The eventual plan is to extend the link to connect with India's vast rail network, but that could take years.

Mr Singh's visit has seen thousands of police and federal paramilitary soldiers patrolling the streets of Indian-administered Kashmir's summer capital, Srinagar.

Shops, schools and offices were closed as part of the separatist-called strike.

The Rajwansher-Anantnag link was to be inaugurated in the summer, but was postponed following anti-India protests.

After some years of relative calm in the valley, tensions were sparked by a plan to grant land to a board that oversees the running of an important Hindu shrine.

On Friday, protesters also burned an effigy of Pakistani President Asif Zardari who was quoted last week by the Wall Street Journal as calling militants in Kashmir "terrorists".

Pakistan has strongly opposed the hydro-electric dam project at Baglihar, saying it will deprive its farmers of irrigation.

Islamabad argued that the dam violated the World Bank-brokered 1960 Indus Water treaty which divided the rights of water from six rivers between India and Pakistan.

In February 2007, the World Bank overruled most of Pakistan's objections.

At the same time, it told India to lower the height of the dam by 1.5m (five feet).

2. Kashmir set for its first train service
BBC
Page last updated at 08:14 GMT, Friday, 10 October 2008 09:14 UK

Kashmir set for its first train service

The first ever train service is due to open on Saturday in the disputed territory of Kashmir, claimed by both India and Pakistan. The line is in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir and could have a dramatic impact on people's lives. The BBC's Geeta Pandey has been to see the work in progress.

Finishing touches are being given at this spanking new railway station in Ompura town in Indian-administered Kashmir.

The granite on the walls is being brightened and the floor is being polished.

As you enter the station, you see the gleaming new platform and the railway tracks. Behind the station, parked in the shed, is the brand new train.

A dozen gun-toting personnel of the paramilitary Railway Protection Force keep a watch.

Ompura, in Budgam district, is a station on the soon-to-be-opened railway line in Indian-administered Kashmir.

The rail link will connect Baramullah town in the north with Qazigund in the south - a distance of 73 miles (117km).

Trial run

Railway officials say the line would be ready by the summer of 2009, but a 44-mile (72km) stretch from Anantnag to Rajwansher via Srinagar is ready and the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is due to inaugurate it on 11 October.

"A trial run with the speed of 110km (68 miles) has been completed and we are ready to go," said a senior official of the Indian Railways Construction Company (Ircon) which is running the project.

The project was first announced in 2,000 and has been eight years in the making.

Constructed at the cost of $466m (20bn rupees), it is the first railway project to join the dots between the various parts of Kashmir Valley.

Ircon officials say the project "will transform the region", bringing development to some of the remotest areas of Indian-administered Kashmir.

"At the moment, it takes three hours to travel by road from Qazigund to Srinagar. The train will do the same distance in 45 minutes," a senior official said.

"It will be useful for students who will be able to travel to Srinagar easily. It will also be a boon to those who need to get to the hospital in the capital city in a medical emergency," he said.

Residents of villages and towns along the track agree.

"Once it becomes operational, the train will definitely help us a lot," said Mohammad Yaseen who lives in Baramullah.

Most ambitious

"It will hugely cut down on our travel time and the authorities have said the fares will be kept low, so it will be good for us," he said.

The railway project is one of the most ambitious undertaken by Indian railways.

More than 5,000 workers, headed by hundreds of civil engineers, toiled for years to lay the tracks, build 900 bridges - including 100 major ones - and construct dozens of platforms.

But the biggest challenge, officials say, was building the network through some of the areas worst affected by the last two decades of insurgency by militants trying to end Indian rule in Kashmir.

Tight security was provided at the work sites with the police and paramilitary troops deployed in large numbers, but the security cordon was still breached on more than one occasion.

"One of our engineers was kidnapped in 2005 along with his brother and they were killed," a senior Ircon official said.

"Our workers were attacked many times by militants. And every time the labourers were attacked, they would all run away, making it difficult for the work to go on."

Kashmir's inhospitable terrain and harsh winters also posed problems for the project.

Symbolic

"Kashmir's winters are too harsh for the outdoor work, which meant in a year effectively the work could go on only for five months," the official said.

However, some in Kashmir say the railway link is more symbolic and will not have much impact on how people live and commute here.

"It is most probably a train for tourists. The coaches have big glass windows from where tourists can have a good unrestricted view of Kashmir's beautiful landscape," says Mubeen Shah, president of the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Says the state's former deputy chief minister Muzaffar Hussain Baig, "The train will provide a degree of comfort. But it will not be as dramatic as a railway link with the rest of the country."

That, say Ircon officials, is part two of the project which will connect the track at Qazigund with Udhampur in the south. And the rest of India.

But that stretch is many more years in the making.