LAHORE, Dec 22: The visit of a Pakistan Railways delegation to India to finalize modalities for resuming the Khokhrapar-Monabao rail link has been delayed for the third time, it is learnt. Sources said on Thursday the four-day tour of the three-member delegation to New Delhi was scheduled to begin from Friday (today), but it had been delayed again for ‘unavoidable reasons’.

The delegation would now be leaving for India in the first week of January, they said.

Headed by railways general manager (operations) Saleemur Rahman Akhoond, the delegation comprises Karachi divisional superintendent Junaid Qureshi and Khokhrapar-Monabao rail link upgradation plan project director Ghulam Rasool Memon. It was to leave for India on Dec 3, and then on Dec 12, they said.

“Replacement of the 135km meter gauge track with broad gauge from Mirpurkhas to Zero Line (border), which is some 8km from Khokhrapar, has been completed and the trial run has been planned in the last week of the current month,” an official working on the Khokhrapar-Monabao rail link upgradation plan said.

A decision to resume the rail link, severed during the September 1965 Indo-Pakistan war, was taken during the visit of President Pervez Musharraf to India.