Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee has been invited by China to attend an international conference on high-speed rail system.
"An invite from the Chinese embassy has come for her (Mamata). She has been invited to speak on a global conference in Beijing on high-speed railway system," a close aide to Mamata told PTI.
The conference is slated in the first week of December this year. However, Mamata is yet to decide on the tour. If she decides to go to China, it would be her first foreign visit after becoming Railway Minister in 2009.
While Indian Railways are keen to introduce high-speed train service in the country, the system is already operational in China.
The 115 km BeijingTianjin high-speed line has been in service since August 2008 in China. Besides, work on another high speed train project, the 1,318 km Beijing-Shanghai corridor is in progress.
Banerjee was earlier invited by Cambridge University to share her thoughts on social, economic and industrial development. But she cancelled her proposed trip to London apparently after learning that Prakash Karat, the general secretary of her party Trinamool Congress' bitter rival CPI(M), was also being invited to deliver a lecture there.
