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Raipur, Oct 10 (IANS) Bastar was finally linked to Chhattisgarh capital Raipur Wednesday when Chief Minister Raman Singh and union Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Processing Charandas Mahant jointly flagged off the Jagdalpur-Durg tri-weekly express train at Jagdalpur. The Durg-Jagdalpur tri-weekly express (No.18211) will leave Durg Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays at 3.15 p.m. and will reach Jagdalpur Wednesdays, Fridays and Mondays at 6.45 a.m. The Jagdalpur-Durg tri-weekly express (No.18212) will leave Jagdalpur Wednesdays, Fridays and Mondays at 12.30 p.m. and will reach Durg Thursdays, Saturdays and Tuesdays at 05.05 a.m. Starting from Jagdalpur, the train will pass through Koraput, Rayagada, Titlagarh, Kantabhaji and Khariar road in Odisha and through Bagbehra, Mahasamund, and Raipur before reaching Durg in Chhattisgarh. The train will cover the 622-km distance in sixteen-and-a-half hours against a normal journey of 7 hours by road, covering a distance of 300 km. Notably, the demand for a rail link with Raipur was being raised by the people of Bastar for quite some time. The region has also seen many a long-drawn agitation on the issue. Speaking on the occasion, the chief minister expressed the hope that the train would play a crucial role in the economic and socio-cultural development of the mineral-rich region hit by Maoist insurgency for the last two decades.
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