Balurghat-Howrah train services set to ply 5 days a week from Jan

BALURGHAT: The Balurghat-Howrah train that is presently plying two days in a week is set to run five days from January.

The directive came through a letter sent by the deputy director, Coaching of Railway board, Vivek Kumar Sinha to the General Manager (OPTG) ER, Gorakhpur.

It may be mentioned that the Ministry of Railway had already approved Zonal Railways' proposal for an increase in the frequency of 13063/13064 Howrah-Balurghat Express from biweekly to five days a week. After changing the schedule, the train will now run Monday to Friday instead of Monday and Tuesday.

Local railway development forum Eklakhi-Balurghat Rail-O-Unnayan Committee had earlier demanded the same owing to the heavy rush of passengers travelling from the region. The general secretary of the forum Pijush Kanti Deb said: "We had appealed to the Rail board several times so that the biweekly train can run daily. As we have only two daily trains running between Balurghat and Kolkata, naturally it is not enough to maintain the huge pressure of the passengers. The passengers will surely be benefitted if it runs five days."

A railway official said that the train will depart from Balurghat at 8 pm from Monday to Friday and from Howrah to Balurghat at 7 am on the same days as per the new schedule.

Residents of Balurghat have expressed happiness on the decision of the Rail board. "The commuters of Balurghat are largely dependent on rail services. We have to travel Kolkata frequently for work, education and medical purposes but the number of trains between Kolkata-Balurghat routes is limited. We are eagerly waiting for the implementation of the decision taken by the Rail board," said a local and central government employee Dipanjan Biswas.