India links restive Kashmir to rest of country by rail for the first time

A gleaming orange train rolled into Srinagar railway station without passengers. Instead, it came bearing a heavier payload: the hopes of millions of people in India's restive Kashmir region, who have long waited to be connected to the rest of the country by rail.

- Debarshi Dasgupta

As the train pulled up on the platform on Jan 25, it was met by cheering bystanders as well as a posse of photojournalists who were there to document the historic occasion.

The train had arrived on a trial run from Katra, a town situated in the federally governed territory of Jammu and Kashmir and around 200km further south of Srinagar, which serves as the territory's summer capital.

When regular train services eventually open on this line, the ambitious plan is to enable people in Kashmir to take a train to Katra and onward to any other rail head in the country. Katra, a popular Hindu pilgrimage destination in the Jammu region, is already connected by rail to several Indian cities.

The successful conclusion of trials of this newly completed strategic railway line to connect Kashmir with the rest of India ends a decades-long wait for better connectivity in this mountainous region nestled in the Himalayas.

Services are expected in the "very near future", according to Mr Himanshu Shekhar Upadhyay, chief public relations officer of the Northern Railway zone of the Indian Railways.

The development of this railway line strengthens India's capability to construct similar railway lines to link other mountainous parts of the country.

Both India and Pakistan administer parts of Kashmir, even though they claim the region in its entirety.

The two South Asian neighbours have also gone to full-blown war over the disputed region twice.

The new railway line comes at a time when neighbouring China has made rapid strides in developing its railway network in Tibet, which lies next to India. China too has territorial disputes with India, including over the Ladakh region that adjoins Jammu and Kashmir.

The newly developed route is part of the 272km Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Railway Link, an ambitious project that was launched in October 1994 and whose construction finally concluded in 2024.