Train To China Border: India To Build Rail Track To Tawang In Arunachal, Where Army Clashed With PLA In December 2022

The Indian Railways is planning to make a railway line upto Tawang, where Indian and Chinese troops clashed in December last year, reports ANI.

The final location survey of the railway line has already been sent to the authorities, the report quotes, Anshul Gupta, general manager of Northeast Frontier Railways, as saying.

This railway line will make it easier for the Indian Army to move quickly and send soldiers and equipment right up to the border in case of a skirmish with China.

Earlier in December 2022, the Indian and Chinese troops clashed in the same place, the Yangtse area of Tawang district in the state of Arunachal Pradesh.

The ANI report also says that two other projects have also been approved, one is the Bame-Aalo line up to Mechuka and the other is the Pasighat-Parshuram-Wakro line.

“These three projects have already been approved and their survey has also been completed. Our target is to complete the Pasighat new line work by March 2025," Gupta added.

The Chinese, on the other hand, have constructed two high-speed railway lines connecting Tibet to the Chinese mainland, very close to the Indian border.

The first railway line, from the North is — Qinghai-Tibet Railway Line — which connects, Xining (Qinghai Province) to Lhasa (Tibet). The total length of the railway line is 1,956 km and was inaugurated in 2006.

The other railway line is — the Lhasa-Nyingchi High-Speed Railway Line, 435 km long and is part of a larger 1,600-km-long Sichuan-Tibet Line that links the eastern city of Chengdu with Lhasa.

Chengdu is also the headquarters of the Chinese Western Theatre command, which is responsible for the frontier with India from Arunachal to Ladakh.

Nyingchi is located 40 km away from the border in Arunachal Pradesh, and the rail line itself runs much closer to the border than that, at some points.

Its construction was started in 2014 at a cost of $4.8 billion and the line started operation on the Lhasa-Nyingchi stretch in June 2021.

Chinese President Xi Jinping also visited Nyingchi and inspected the Nyingchi railway station.

China has also built a 250-km-long highway linking Nyingchi with Lhasa, which, like the Lhasa-Nyingchi rail line, runs close to Arunachal.

Although the development of infrastructure on the Indian side of the border has picked up pace over the past few years, India still has much catching up to do.

Arunachal Pradesh made it to the national railways map only in 2014.

In 2019, the Narendra Modi government gave the go-ahead for three railway projects in the state, including the 378-km-long Bhalukpong-Tawang line, the 248-km-long North Lakhimpur-Silapathar line, and the 227-km-long Pasighat-Rupai line.