India looks at Central Asia, Europe links bypassing Pak

However, a 545-km long missing link between Iran and Pakistan has thwarted such ambitions in the past. Despite UIC officials saying that this missing link may be constructed in a couple of years, India, say Rail Bhawan sources, is now keen to pursue the multi-modal corridor with Russia through Iran, especially with an Indian heading the UIC for the first time.

What is being envisaged includes transport of containerised goods from Mumbai port to Iran’s Bandar-E -Abbas port through the sea route and further upto Russia and Northern Europe through rail-road networks. In its entirety, the route would end up linking

St Petersburg, Moscow, Tehran, Bandar-E-Abbas and Mumbai.

Russia, which has already signed an MoU with Iran for setting up a railway company, is now in talks with India to set up a joint Russia-Iran-India operating company which would operate traffic on the rail and sea route of this corridor.

“Today’s meeting of UIC’s Asian Assembly saw a lot of interest being shown in the North South Corridor linking Russia and India via Iran which will be an international multi-modal corridor for containerised traffic,” said UIC and Indian Railway Board chairman J P Batra.

Following the approval from the Union Cabinet, India , said Batra, would be signing and ratifying the inter-governmental agreement on TAR sometime in the middle of the year.

UIC has also proposed to conduct a study to explore a China-India international corridor which will pass through Myanmar before entering India. “India has already sanctioned 100 km of work on its side of the 315 km-long missing link with Myanmar,” Batra said.