Renovation of the Anuradhapura–Mahawa railway line, which was implemented at a cost of US$ 92 million with the aim of establishing a regular and efficient transport service in the country, has been completed and was officially handed over to the Sri Lanka Railway Department recently.
The renovation work of the Northern Railway Line which was operated under the loan scheme of the Government of India was carried out in three stages – Anuradhapura–Omanthai, Anuradhapura–Mihintale, and Anuradhapura–Mahawa, Project Director Chinthaka Jayasekara said.
The renovation of the Anuradhapura–Mahawa section was started in January this year under the patronage of Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Santosh Jha and the Railway Department is confident that the train service from Mahawa to Anuradhapura will be operational again from tomorrow (14).
Jayasekara said that the main benefit resulting from this is that the travel time from Colombo to Kankasanturai will be reduced from seven-and-a-half hours to five hours with the renovation of the railway line.
During the British colonial period, construction of the Northern Railway Line started in 1894. In 1956, the Yaldevi train started running from Colombo to Kankasanturai. Since then, this railway service has been used to transport hundreds of thousands of passengers and goods between the North and the South.
With the escalation of the war in 1986, this railway line was completely closed. After the ending of the war the railway line which was completely destroyed was restored under the Indian loan scheme and trains started running again in 2014 from Colombo to Kankasanturai. But, the trains had to run very slowly under many speed limits.
As a result, the Jaffna–Colombo train journey took seven-and-a-half hours, and the postal train journey took 12 hours, making it difficult to provide an efficient service to the people. A tender worth US$92 million was called for in 2018 from the US$3.1 billion loan proposal received for railway modernisation in 2017 and after a procurement process, the contract was awarded to the Indian government-owned IRCONE company from among the bidders and the renovation work started in 2019.
After 2019, the subject was brought under the purview of three Ministers and five Secretaries and there were various obstacles to start the renovation of this railway line.
After the economic crisis of 2022, the section from Anuradhapura to Omanthai was completed in 2023 and opened in July 2023 under the special efforts of the Minister in charge, Transport, Highways and Mass Media Minister Dr. Bandula Gunawardhana, with the support of the former Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Gopal Baglay.
Later, the reconstruction of the section from Mahawa to Anuradhapura started in January 2024 with the current Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka Santosh Jha. He said that the completed project was officially handed over to the Railway Department on Wednesday at the Transport Ministry after completing the inspection tour by trains on the newly renovated line.