Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Border Roads Organisation (BRO), India’s strategic infrastructure capacity creation agency, has been majorly focusing on building roads and bridges in states which have their borders with China.
In the year 2021, the eastern sector including the states of Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim saw 149.98 km and 69.46 km long roads were constructed. It was 102.14 km in 2020 and 93.24 km in 2019 for Arunachal Pradesh and 39.38 km and 37.15 km for the same period in Sikkim.
The detailed data was shared by the Ministry of Defence in Lok Sabha on February 11, 2022.
The LAC with China is 3,488 km long and is divided into the eastern sector with Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, the middle sector comprising Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, and the western sector with Ladakh.
BRO constructed 144.41 km of roads in Uttarakhand and 55.17 km in Himachal Pradesh in the year 2021. Roads spanning 83.17 km and 52.84 km in Uttarakhand and 36.23 km and 28.83 km in Himachal Pradesh were constructed in 2020 and 2019 respectively.
The army and the Chinese PLA currently maintain a combined deployment of more than a lakh soldiers since May 2020 and it includes a massive presence of tanks and artillery.
Roads prove integral to maintain such heavy deployment, however, the high altitude and rarefied atmosphere makes construction activities difficult.
“However, the focus on states bordering China will continue,” said a BRO officer. BRO added 135.49 km of new roads in 2021, and completed 145.25 km and 102.14 km in 2020 and 2019 respectively.
A total road length of 846.59 km was constructed by (BRO) in 2021, including those of the above-mentioned states.
