New Delhi, October 17
In brazen slackness on the part of the Indian establishment vis-à-vis China, work on the strategically vital roads in the Himalayas is tottering way behind schedule and in some cases, has totally stopped. As a result, only 25 per cent of the road-building work that was allocated for this financial year has been completed so far, even as half the fiscal is over.

With winter having set in as far as the Himalayas are concerned, progress on the road-building will be even slower than in the first half of the fiscal that ended on September 30. So far, only Rs 1337 crore have been spent by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) out of its budget of Rs 4962 crore for the year 2011-12.

Sources said at this rate, work will suffer badly. They also estimate that the lag this year will be worse than last year, when the BRO could not utilise its Rs 5427 crore budget and returned Rs 946 crore that was meant for building strategic roads.

A reported clash of egos and divergence of priorities between two groups of officials within the BRO, who have put their ‘false prestige’ ahead of national interest, is one of the prime reasons for the scenario, sources across the BRO and the Ministry of Defence said.

Some of the roads are of such strategic importance that the Army is paying out of its own budget and some roads had been recommended by the all-powerful China Study Group (CSG) headed by the Cabinet Secretary.

A very senior functionary in the Ministry of Defence admitted there was a ‘fight’ between two groups and it was being sorted out. Just two weeks ago, the Minister of State for Defence MM Pallam Raju visited Jammu and Kashmir and asked the BRO to put all roads on priority.

The slackness in road-building has occurred even as PM Manmohan Singh and Defence Minister AK Antony have been assuring that the work to build infrastructure alongside the Chinese frontier is progressing well.

Data of the Border Roads Organisation accessed by The Tribune shows that work on roads in Jammu and Kashmir (largely in Ladakh), Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand is way behind schedule. Here are a few examples. The Chusumle-Demchok road in Eastern Ladakh was to be completed in 2012. The revised schedule has pushed the year of completion to 2015.

The Ministry of Defence wants an all-weather road across the sensitive 18,634-feet-high Marsimik-la near the Line of Actual Control with China in Eastern Ladakh. So far, only 1.43 km of the 43-km stretch is metalled. The project was to be completed last year, but the completion has now been scheduled for 2014.