Gitaldaha is a village and a
gram panchayat in the
Dinhata I CD block in the
Dinhata subdivision of the
Cooch Behar district
Cooch Behar district (), also known as Koch Bihar district, is one of the List of districts of West Bengal, 23 districts of the state of West Bengal in India. The district is the part of Jalpaiguri division, Jalpaiguri Division. Cooch Behar ci ...
in the state of
West Bengal
West Bengal (; Bengali language, Bengali: , , abbr. WB) is a States and union territories of India, state in the East India, eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabi ...
,
India
India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
.
Geography
Location
Gitaldaha is located at .
Gitaldaha I and Gitaldaha II are gram panchayats in Dinhata I CD block.
Area overview
The map alongside shows the eastern part of the district. In Tufanganj subdivision 6.97% of the population lives in the urban areas and 93.02% lives in the rural areas. In Dinhata subdivision 5.98% of the population lives in the urban areas and 94.02% lives in the urban areas.
The entire district forms the flat
alluvial
Alluvium (, ) is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. Alluvium is also sometimes called alluvial deposit. Alluvium is ...
flood plains of mighty rivers.
Note: The map alongside presents some of the notable locations in the subdivisions. All places marked in the map are linked in the larger full screen map.
Demographics
As per the
2011 Census of India, Gitaldaha had a total population of 3,917. There were 2,058 (53%) males and 1,859 (47%) females. There were 492 persons in the age range of 0 to 6 years. The total number of literate people in Gitaldaha was 2,563 (74.83% of the population over 6 years).
Railway connections
New Gitaldaha railway station is on the broad gauge
Alipurduar-Bamanhat branch line. Local trains link the area to larger stations at Cooch Behar and Alipurduar from where trains are available for places all over the country.
The area was agog with railway activity in the 19th-20th century. The Assam Behar State Railway linked
Parbatipur to
Katihar, with a
metre gauge
Metre-gauge railways ( US: meter-gauge railways) are narrow-gauge railways with track gauge of or 1 metre.
Metre gauge is used in around of tracks around the world. It was used by several European colonial powers including France, Britain and ...
line in 1889. in the early 1900s, the
Eastern Bengal Railway extended railways to
Lalmonirhat,
Gitaldaha (via
Mogalhat),
Bamanhat
Bamanhat is a neighbourhood and a gram panchayat in the Dinhata II CD block in the Dinhata subdivision of the Cooch Behar district, West Bengal, India.
Geography
Location
Bamanhat is located at .
Bamanhat I and Bamanhat II are gram pa ...
,
Golokganj and other places, thereby connecting Assam to Katihar, in Bihar, via North Bengal. In 1901
Cooch Behar State Railway built the
narrow gauge
A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and .
Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with Minimum railw ...
line from Gitaldaha to
Jayanti, near the Bhutan border. Shortly thereafter, the line was upgraded to meter gauge.
The Lalmonirhat-Mogalhat-Gitaldaha route was functional when India and Pakistan agreed in 1955 for resumption of railway traffic between the two countries, and it included movement of cross traffic via Mogalhat through the Eastern Bengal Railway. A portion of the bridge across the Dharla River at was washed away by floods in 1988.
The conversion of the long
Alipurduar-Bamanhat branch line to
broad gauge
A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge (the distance between the rails) broader than the used by standard-gauge railways.
Broad gauge of , more known as Russian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in former Soviet Union countries ...
in 2007, and its subsequent recommissioning, had a station at
New Gitaldaha.
References
{{Cooch Behar District
Villages in Cooch Behar district