Barak River is the second largest river in the North Eastern Region. It originates from south of Kohima in Nagaland near Nagaland – Manipur Border. After traversing through Nagaland, Manipur and Assam, it splits at Bhanga into two streams called Surma and Kushiyara. These two streams rejoin at Markuli in Bangladesh and thereafter the river is called Meghna. Barak – Meghna river system has a total length of 900 km (origin to upstream Chandpur in Bangladesh). Out of this, 524km is in India, 31 km on Indo – Bangladesh border and the rest is in Bangladesh. Out of 524 km in India, 403 km u/s of Lakhipur is in the hilly terrain and it is not navigable.
The navigable portion of Barak River in India is the 121km stretch between Lakhipur and Bhanga which has been declared as NW-16 in the year 2016.
Implementation of various projects for development of infrastructure on NW-16 has already been started. In this process, dredging work in Silchar – Bhanga stretch is in progress and about 65% works has been completed by June, 2018. DPRs for developing floating terminals at Karimganj and Badarpur along with mechanical handling and storage facilities for cargo have been prepared. Development of IWT based multimodal terminal at Silchar is also planned.