141 years in making, Kashmir finally connected to country’s rail network
Srinagar, Jun 6: A dream first envisioned in 1884 by Maharaja Pratap Singh of Jammu and Kashmir came to life on Friday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the iconic Chenab and Anji Khad railway bridges, effectively integrating the Kashmir Valley into India’s national railway grid for the first time.
The milestone marks the culmination of over a century of ambition, halted many times by history, geography, and conflict.
In 1884, Maharaja Pratap Singh instructed his Prime Minister, Diwan Anant Ram, to formally write to the Brit- ish Indian government, pro- posing rail connectivity for
the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Even as the Maharaja commissioned British engineers to survey the rugged Himalayan terrain in the 1890s, political and financial constraints, and later global and national upheavals from World War I to India’s independence movement shelved these ambitions.
The Jammu-Srinagar rail- way idea was revived in 1983 under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, when the foundation stone was laid for the Jammu-Udhampur-Srinagar line. By then, Jammu had been reconnected to India’s railways through Ludhiana and Pathankot. However, the project progressed sluggishly only 11 km of railway was built in 13 years, despite a
ballooning cost from Rs 50 crore to Rs 300 crore.
In the late 1990s, under Prime Ministers HD Deve Gowda and IK Gujral, the Udhampur-Katra-Baramulla Railway Line (USBRL) was initiated as a Rs 2,500 crore national priority. The project was declared a national project in 2002 to underscore its strategic and developmental importance. The Jammu Udhampur line opened in 2005. In 2014, the Udhampur- Katra section was inaugurated, improving access to the shrine at Vaishno Devi. Mean- while, the Valley segment Baramulla to Qazigund — was developed as a standalone net- work and completed in 2009.
The real challenge, how- ever, lay in bridging the difficult Himalayan terrain
between Katra and Banihal, through the Chenab river gorge and Anji Khad valley. This section remained the final frontier. Now, the com- pletion of the Chenab Bridge and Anji Khad Bridge has closed the last remaining gap in the USBRL. The Chenab Bridge, at 359 metres above the riverbed, is the world’s highest railway arch bridge, 35 metres taller than the Eiffel Tower.
The Anji Khad Bridge is India’s first cable-stayed railway bridge. In all, the Kashmir railway corridor features 38 tunnels and 927 bridges, built through some of India’s most challeng- ing terrain. Over 215 km of access roads had to be constructed just to reach remote, often insurgency-hit areas.
Despite terrorist threats, especially in the early 2000s, construction continued with security and resolve. In 2004, a terrorist attack injured several workers at a site near Anantnag. Yet, Indian engineers and labourers pressed on. The Banihal Qazigund tunnel, completed in 2013, passed through some of the most sensitive zones in the Valley. With the recent inauguration of the Katra-Srinagar Vande Bharat Express, the Kashmir Valley is now formally linked to the rest of the country’s railway net- work — from Kanyakumari in the south to Baramulla in the north. This long-awaited integration transforms the often-cited phrase “Kashmir se Kanyakumari” from symbolism into steel reality.
