Even as the Army has started the process of raising a Mountain Strike Corps comprising 40,000 personnel to counter China, lack of infrastructure including strategic roads and rail is a cause of concern and could make it difficult for this Corps to reach the remote areas in case of exigency.
Given this critical situation, the Army has taken up the issue of lack of roads with the Central Government and has asked all the agencies involved in this project to speed up the process of building the infrastructure at war footing.
The Cabinet Committee on Security(CCS) in August last year gave the go-ahead for raising the Mountain Strike Corps over a period of five to seven years. Expected to cost more than Rs 80,000 crore, the Army will acquire long-range artillery guns, howitzers, helicopters besides developing bases in Bihar, West Bengal and Jharkhand for troops.
This massive project will not give the desired results if the roads and rail link are not built simultaneously as the troops will have to be airlifted to various locations in the North-East including Arunachal Pradesh and ladakh in the absence of roads.
Concerned over the heavy cost involved in maintaining troops through air, the Army is keen that all the 72 roads spread over the hill States facing China should be ready in a time bound manner. At present, these strategic projects including 20 roads in Arunachal are running three to four years behind schedule thereby adding to cost in sustaining the troops deployed in far reaching areas.
The Government had allocated Rs 9,300 crore three years back for developing these strategic roads and Army Chief General Bikram Singh admitted recently that there are slippages in time lines to complete the project.
Having repeatedly taken this issue with the Government, Singh said a more ‘focused commitment’ from various stakeholders was needed to build infrastructure in the remote areas. The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) is the lead agency to build most of the strategic roads besides the State Governments constructing the link roads to these important lifelines.
Stating that there was a need to ‘revitalise’ the BRO, the Army Chief said the Government is actively considering a proposal to outsource construction some of the key roads to reputed builders. This proposal was mooted to hasten the construction of roads keeping pace with the Mountain Strike Corps project and some key air bases in the North-East and ladakh.
Nearly 30 airbases and advanced landing grounds are now in various stages of upgradation in the North-East and are expected to be ready for operations by the end of 2015.
At present, the troops deployed in Arunachal have to trek for four to five days from the nearest road head for their locations in forward areas facing China on the line of Actual Control(lAC). The situation is same in leh and ladakh and helicopters are the lifeline of the troops in Arunachal and ladakh for giving logistical support.
However, China has built has built roads right up to the lAC on their side besides laying down a rail network of more than 10,000 km in Tibetan plateau. These two factors given China a distinct advantage over India in terms of maintaining troops on the lAC and rushing ammunition and more troops in case of any emergency.