Union Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari will lay the foundation stone for a multi-modal terminal at Varanasi and flag off the trial run of two vessels carrying Maruti Suzuki cars and construction material, as a part of National Waterway-1 development on Friday.
The phase-I of the multi-modal terminal will be built by AFCONS Infrastructure at an estimated cost of Rs.170 crore and is slated to completed by August 2018.
“The terminal will have road and rail connectivity with proposed links on NH-7 and Jeonathpur railway station respectively,” the Union Shipping Ministry said in a statement here. The two vessels — MV Joy Basudev with a capacity of 1,400 tonnes and MV VV Giri with a capacity of 300 tonnes — containing newly-assembled cars of Maruti Suzuki and construction material, respectively, will be flagged off from the Aghoreshwar Bhagwan Ram Ghat at Varanasi on August 12, the official statement said.
The cargo handling capacity of the multi-modal terminal is estimated to be 1.2 million metric tonnes per annum and it will handle cement and food grains among others.
