With China building major road infrastructure along the McMahon line, India is planning to construct a 2,000 km strategic road along the India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh. Estimated to cost over Rs40,000 crore, this could be one of the biggest infrastructure projects of this nature in India.
Revealing this, Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said on Tuesday that the 2,000-km road will connect Mago-Tingbu near Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh with Vijaynagar in Changlang district of the State.Rijiju was talking to newspersons at Itanagar after making an aerial survey of the proposed site for establishment of a National Film and Television Institute at Jote near Itanagar.
“The road has been planned keeping in mind the security point of view along the International border and the accelerated infrastructure development programme of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government at the Centre,” he said.He also added that the road could help tackle the migration of people to Tawang, Itanagar and other adjoining areas from interior places.
“There has been large-scale migration of people from border areas to places like Itanagar and Tawang as there is lack of facilities in interior border areas. There is a need to push them back by creating all basic amenities to make them comfortable,” Rijiju said, adding the road will better the communication network and all the facilities could be made available to them.
Rijiju said the construction of the road will be a huge challenge in the area considering the rough and hostile terrain through which it would pass. “This will be the biggest single infrastructure project in the history of India with an estimated cost of over Rs40,000 crore,” said Rijiju, who is also looking after border area management in the Home Ministry.He informed that Union Minister of Road, Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari had entrusted him with the responsibility to look after road projects in the North-Eastern States except Assam.
Although the Minister did not mention anything about China, the proposed road is expected to be India’s answer to China’s massive road infrastructure projects across the McMahon line.
Given the importance of this border State, 17 roads in Arunachal have been identified as strategically importance, but the pace of construction is rather slow. Efforts are now on to expedite the construction to provide the much-needed logistical support to the troops. At present, they have to trek for more than three days to reach their posts on the lAC from the nearest road head due to paucity of road connectivity.
Incidentally, the Central Government has earmarked 73 roads as strategically important in all the States facing China. These States include Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.
Besides the road project, the Government has asked various agencies to hasten up the process of up grading airfields in these States, especially in the North-East. At least 30 airfields are now undergoing modernisation with bulk of them maintained by the IAF and it hopes to complete the project in the next three to four years.
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