New Delhi: With Chinese military adventurism heightening along the LAC, India has also galvanised its road construction along the borders with BRO building over 2,300 kilometres of roads in the last three years. On Monday, the government informed the upper house of the Parliament that a total of 2373.602 km border roads have been constructed by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) in the last three years.
As per the data shared by the Union Defense Minister, the Union Territory of Ladakh emerged at the top of this list with 464.577 kms of road constructed by the BRO during the last three years followed by Arunachal Pradesh (417.613 km), Jammu & Kashmir (368.550 km), Rajasthan (351.793 km) and Uttarakhand (332.223 km).
This data was shared by Defense Minister Rajnath Singh in a written reply to a question posed by MP Naresh Bansal. "Adequate infrastructure to move forces in border areas is already available and efforts are made to further develop the border infrastructure.
BRO takes up the task of construction/improvement of roads of strategic importance in the border areas, as per prioritisation of these roads which is fixed by the Indian Army", Singh said to a question whether there are still more borders not having adequate infrastructure to move forces in the border area.
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"Based on the requirements of the Indian Army, a five (5) year Long Term Roll on Works Plan (LTRoWP) is prepared for construction/improvement of roads in the border areas. The present LTRoWP is for the period 2018-23 involving construction of 256 Roads and Bridges totaling 13501.48 km," he said.
To another question on the length of border roads completed or under construction in the last five years, MoS, Ministry of Defense Ajay Bhatt informed the Rajya Sabha that a total of 3,595 km of roads have been constructed by the BRO with most of the roads constructed in 2020-2021 (940.64 km) and 2021-2022 (741.70 km).
"Further, 6195 Km of Border Roads are under construction: Bhatt added. It is worthy to note here that ever since the Glawan valley incident in 2020, the Government since then has stepped up the ante on the border construction near the LAC. Interestingly, Ajay Bhatt on July 25 informed the Parliament that the government constructed 2,088.57 kms of road along the border with China by incurring an expenditure of Rs 15,477.06 crore.
