New waterway to connect Ashuganj in B'desh and Sonamura in

Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb Tuesday said a new waterway would come up within six months for movement of container ships between Sonamura in Sipahijala district of the state and Ashuganj river port in eastern Bangladesh to ply.

After the completion of the new waterways goods to the state will directly reach Sonamura town from Bangladesh easily, Deb told reporters here.

The central government would soon start dredging Gomati river on the Indian side for the new waterway to connect Ashuganj port on Meghna river covering about 60 KM, he said.

The secretary to the department of shipping of the central government had recently visited the state and the sites of the waterways recently and told the state government that dredging of Gomati river and construction of a small river port would be completed within less than six months time.

Deb said a bridge, which is being constructed by an Indian agency on Feni river in Sabroom sub-division of South Tripura district to connect the Chittagong port in Bangladesh would be completed by March next year.

Sabroom is about 130 km from here and Chittagong port is about 70 km from the bridge.

He said after the completion of the access to the port, a large portion of goods to the north eastern states would be transported through Tripura and Bangladesh government would get a good amount of revenue due to Indias access to the port.

Deb also said the 15 km long railway track from Agartala to Akhaura in Bangladesh would be completed within 2020 and the north eastern state would be well connected with south Asian countries through Bangladesh.

With the twin advantage of International Internet Gateway (IIG) and uninterrupted power supply, the Tripura government would hard sell the states potential for being an information technology hub.

Tripura is now a power surplus state.

The Agartala IIG is the third internet gateway after Mumbai and Chennai. Rs 19.14 crore was spent to create the infrastructure for the third IIG here to get access to the 10 gigabit bandwidth from Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited.

The optical fibre cable link for the purpose has been established between Akhaura (along Agartala) and Cox's Bazar in southeast Bangladesh.

Deb said, It is the dream of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make India a digital India and at the same time it is also my dream to make Tripura a digital Tripura.

He said Tripura would be made a model state within the next four years and many modern cities having all facilities would be built in the state.

Besides, many new towers like tea tower, IT tower, police tower and big hospitals would be built on multistoried buildings.

"I want many more high rises of different institutions to come up in the state, he added.