December 22, 2001	Saturday	Shawwal 6, 1422

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

LAHORE, Dec 21: The Pakistan Railways and the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation have no knowledge of the Indian decision of suspending from Jan 1 the train and bus services.

The decision, announced by New Delhi in the morning, was not conveyed to the PR and the PTDC by the Foreign Office in Islamabad till the evening.

Senior officials of the two departments waited for the new development till late in the afternoon and then declared that they were not in a position to confirm reports.

Operating between Lahore and Delhi since 1976, the Samjhota Express is now a twice-a-week train which runs on Mondays and Thursdays. Besides transporting passengers, it is also a means for goods traffic and accounts for about 10 per cent of the trade between the two countries.

It remained suspended for some months in early 2000 following the Kargil conflict. The service was restored in August last. Of late, the two railways had met to review goods traffic and took some decisions to enhance its volume.

As for the Lahore-Delhi bus service, it started in March 1999 after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee came to visit Lahore by bus. At present four buses are run every week between the two historic cities — two each by the PTDC and New Delhi Bus Service.

Like Samjhota, it is also an economically viable project as all buses leave packed to capacity. Passengers have to book seats in advance at least by 10 days.

The two governments had also recently considered raising the number of buses from four to eight.