India and Afghanistan are considering a proposal of laying a 600-km railway line between Bamiyan province in the central part of the country and its western province Herat, bordering Iran.
Responding to a query, Wahidullah Shahrani, Afghanistan’s Minister of Mines, said here on Wednesday that this was a newly proposed rail corridor project, which both countries might jointly implement.
“The proposed corridor would link a number of mineral resources deposits in Afghanistan,” the Minister said. The landlocked and war-ravaged country does not have a physical communication infrastructure.
Though a SAIL-led consortium of steel makers was involved in an iron ore and steel project linked to Bamiyan deposits of Hajigak, he insisted that this was a separate project. Another consortium, also led by SAIL, has bid for an unexplored copper deposit in Herat’s Shaida area.
Officials in New Delhi and Kabul have been trying to find a transport route that can viably evacuate minerals or metals out of Afghanistan.
A proposal of a rail link from Hajigak will run westwards to Iran, along the Zaranj-Delaram highway that India had built in the mid-2000s, to the Iranian port of Chabahar.
jayanta.mallick@thehindu.co.in