Grip on Chicken’s Neck roads: Centre takes control of key stretches after Trinamool-era delay
Telegraph | 18 May 2026
The Centre will take charge of some of Bengal’s most strategically important stretches of highway, many of them passing through the narrow and vulnerable “Chicken’s Neck” corridor, the solitary land link between the Northeast and the rest of the country.
Bengal’s new government has in one of its earliest decisions cleared the handover of seven stretches of national highway to the National Highways Authority of India and the National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd.
The move has implications not just for infrastructure development — such as road repairs and widening — and trade but also for defence and national security, subjects close to the heart of the BJP that now rules both at the Centre and in Bengal.
Five of the seven stretches handed over pass through the Siliguri Corridor or Chicken’s Neck, a 60km tract that is barely 20-22km wide at its narrowest and is wedged between Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh, while China lies to the north beyond Sikkim. Any disruption to the corridor can impact connectivity with the eight northeastern states.
Security analysts have repeatedly stressed the need for wider and more fortified highways in the region, especially keeping in mind the Doklam standoff with China (at the India-Bhutan-China trijunction) in 2017 and the recurring landslides that often snap connectivity to Sikkim and the hills.
“The government of West Bengal has accorded in-principle approval for handing over seven stretches of National Highways from NH wing of the State Public Works Department to NHAI and NHIDCL,” a press note issued by the chief secretary’s office said.
It said the proposals had been pending with the state government for nearly a year “despite repeated requests” from the central agencies and “works on these stretches stood stalled in the absence of formal handover”.
The BJP had relentlessly attacked the erstwhile Mamata Banerjee government over the delay in these stretches’ handover to the central agencies.
The BJP had alleged that illegal immigration from Bangladesh — which it accused the Trinamool government of facilitating — had by changing the demography in north Bengal’s border districts further compromised the Siliguri Corridor’s security.
After Sheikh Hasina’s fall, the BJP had tried to fan public alarm citing how radical, anti-India voices from Bangladesh were calling for weakening India by severing the Chicken’s Neck.
While Mamata kept pleading that border management remained the Centre’s domain, the BJP claimed a “double-engine” government alone was capable of fortifying this fragile passage.
Officials said the handover decision could fast-track long-pending expansion, strengthening and repairs of highways considered critical for defence logistics, trade, tourism and regional connectivity.
NH10, in particular, has remained vulnerable to monsoon damage, triggering repeated disruptions in supplies to Sikkim. NH110, connecting Darjeeling, has for years suffered chronic landslides, subsidence and traffic bottlenecks.
“Taken together, these seven stretches strengthen connectivity to Sikkim, Bhutan and Bangladesh, link the Darjeeling hills, the Dooars and North Bengal with the national highway network, improve the Bihar-Bengal corridor through Malda and Murshidabad, and upgrade the road spine running through Murshidabad, Nadia and North 24-Parganas up to the Indo-Bangladesh border at Ghojadanga,” the pressnote said.