The Ministry of Railways has received a proposal from the Northeast Frontier Railway for the establishment of a Rail Coach Factory in Assam’s Bodoland Territorial Council.
This would be the first factory of its kind in the east and northeast India, and it is expected to generate significant employment for residents of north Bengal and the neighboring state of Assam.
The proposed rail coach factory is expected to be built near the Bengal-Assam border, in the Alipurduar division of the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR).
According to media reports, the factory is likely to come up somewhere in Kokrajhar, a district in Assam that shares borders with Bengal. Furthermore, Kokrajhar is one of the five districts of Assam which is under the Bodoland Territorial Council
Currently, the railways have three operational rail coach factories-Integral Coach Factory (ICF) at Chennai in Tamil Nadu, Rail Coach Factory (RCF) at Kapurthala in Punjab and Modern Coach Factory (MCF) at Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh.
The project was a part of the rail ministry’s ambitious target to start 100 percent indigenous manufacturing of rail coaches by December 2022.
