India-Burma bus link faces delay
Connectivity may have been high on the agenda during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s ongoing visit to Burma but the much awaited Imphal (India)-Mandalay (Burma) passenger bus service will now take some more time to take off.
New Delhi may possibly be disappointed as the expected MoU to launch the weekly trans-border bus service between Manipur’s capital, Imphal, and Mandalay could not be inked during the PM’s visit. While both sides signed a slew of agreements and MoUs in Naypyidaw on Monday, the pact to commence a passenger bus service was not among them.
India had tied up things at its end with the Union Cabinet giving its nod last week to the proposal prepared by the ministry of road transport and highways prior to the PM’s Sunday departure for Naypyidaw. However, New Delhi had not heard from the Burma government on the proposed bus link which is aimed at increasing people-to-people, said sources.
So for now, India has to be content with the two sides stating in their joint statement issued in Naypyidaw on Monday which says, “the two sides agreed to launch a trans-border bus service from Imphal, India, to Mandalay. The two leaders (Indian PM and Burma President U. Thein Sein) directed the concerned officials from both sides to finalise all modalities to enable its early operationalisation”.
India had done the ground-work for inking the MoU for the Mandalay-Imphal bus service — -it’s a distance of roughly 384 km — after detailed discussions with Burma. However, New Delhi had already got indications that the proposed MoU may not come through with foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai telling reporters late last week that “the procedures on Burma side for getting their cabinet approval are not quite completed yet”.
Under the proposed bus service, private operators were to run the weekly service with passengers transferring from one bus to another once they crossed the border at Moreh/Tamu.
During his ongoing visit, the PM also announced that India will repair and upgrade 71 bridges on the Tamu-Kalewa Friendship Road. The Indian government built the approximately 160 km long Friendship Road between Tamu-Kalewa-Kalemyo (TKK road) in Burma, which connects Burma to Moreh in Manipur.
Moreover, the two sides also agreed that India will undertake the upgradation of the Kalewa-Yargyi road segment while Burma would upgrade the Yargyi-Monywa stretch to highway standards. the aim being to establish trilateral connectivity from Moreh in India to Mae Sot in Thailand via Burma.
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