Silchar, Sept. 19: The Union forest and environment ministry has granted final approval for acquisition of 3.6 hectares of forest land inside Barail reserve forest in Dima Hasao district to enable Northeast Frontier Railway construct a railway track and a bridge. The approval was granted this month, according to the forest department sources in Dima Hasao district. The sources added that the long-pending work to convert the 214km 108-year-old metre gauge line in the Silchar-Lumding hill section into 201km broad gauge track can now be expedited. The Centre had granted “in principle” environmental clearance to NF Railway in February this year for starting the gauge conversion work, which actually started way back in 1998. The long delay of the project was caused by problems of insurgency and slow acquisition of land, which had led to spiralling of the project cost from Rs 748 crore to Rs 1,800 crore. According to forest department sources, NFR has already paid Rs 30.48 lakh for acquiring the land in the reserve forest. They said out of this amount, Rs 26.28 lakh would be the present value of the forest land and Rs 2.55 lakh would be utilised for compensatory afforestation in the adjoining areas. The general manager of NF Railway, Ranjit Singh Virdi, on September 13 said in Karimganj that the deadline for completion of civil construction for the gauge conversion has now been fixed for December next year. The declaration by the general manager comes at a time when much of the civil work relating to the project is still pending. A senior NFR official said the work for setting up 20 tunnels along the proposed line has not yet registered any significant progress. Of the total 10,800 metres of the tunnel, only 7,241 metres have been completed. He said there would be 24 stations along the new 200km line. The construction of 56 major bridges along the proposed track have been taken up and among them, the 375-metre-long bridge at Badarpur ghat over the river Barak, is almost nearing completion.