Track-Laying of Iran’s Chabahar-Zahedan Railway Kicks Off

In a ceremony on Wednesday in Sistan and Baluchestan, Iranian Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami  inaugurated the track-laying of the Chabahar-Zahedan railway.
The track-laying of the Chabahar-Zahedan railway officially started in the presence of Road Minister Eslami, the head of Khatam Al-Anbia Construction Headquarter, the province’s governor, and other senior officials.

As Iran’s Deputy Minister of Roads and Urban Development for Construction and Development of Railways Abbas Khatibi informed Mehr News Agency, Zahedan–Chabahar railway is the most important and strategic railway project in Iran. He said that the railway project, which is to be operational by next year, has had 48% of physical development by the present time, adding, "About 32 kilometers of track-laying has been done from Zahedan to Chabahar and today the procedure started from Chabahar to Zahedan."

The National Development Fund of Iran, due to the direct order of the Leader of the Islamic Republic, has allocated €300 million to the project, of which €100 million has been received, Khatibi said. "After completed, the mega Chabahar-Zahedan railway will have a huge impact on railway transportation of eastern Iran, for it will be linked to the Khaf-Herat railway. Khaf-Herat railway is a major part of the Iranian railway corridor in the east of the country. The network will provide easy access to Afghanistan and Uzbekistan," added the deputy minister.  As planned, the Khaf-Herat railway will be inaugurated in less than a month, he stressed.

According to a report, India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Defense Minister Rajnath Singh made a brief stopover in Tehran as they returned from the Shanghai Co-operation Organization (SCO) Summit in Moscow in September. Their visit came after Tehran decided to exclude India from the rail project. India will be allowed to use the forthcoming Chabahar-
Zahedan railway in Iran to transport goods to Central Asia and Afghanistan if it shows it has faith in the project's strategic advantages, Sputnik has learnt. The prevailing consensus in Iran is that the project could “only thrive” if it served as a “gateway” to the markets of Afghanistan, Central Asia and India.

Laying the tracks for the Chabahar-Zahedan railway started at the Chabahar end on Wednesday, Tehran Times reported. According to the report, Khatam-ol Anbia Construction Headquarters (KAHQ) is the contractor. The railway is supposed to connect Chabahar Port on Iran's south-eastern coast with Zahedan, about 430 miles due north in the Sistan and Baluchestan Province near the country’s border with Afghanistan.

India’s state-owned Indian Railways Construction Ltd (IRCON) was originally the contractor before it was dropped by Tehran in July this year. It was dropped reportedly because of “delays” in getting funding to Iran from India which resulted from American economic sanctions. Reports of India exiting the project were denied by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) back then. - Mehr, Tasnim, Sputnik