M A I N   N E W S

Missing roads near LAC hit Army preparedness
Arun Joshi/TNS

“It would take a lot of time to catch up with China”, the source said. He referred to a recent meeting in which Defence Minister AK Antony had reprimanded the Border Roads Organisation for its sluggishness in building the roads in the sensitive areas.

Tough Going * The Army has time and again alerted the Ministry of Defence about the poor road connectivity, which is hitting the ferrying of men and machine to frontiers hard * This is in sharp contrast to the Chinese side, where blacktop highways exist from the zero line and are connected to far away Beijing * Defence Minister AK Antony had recently reprimanded the Border Roads Organisation for its sluggishness in building the roads in sensitive areas

China, on the other hand, has built better roads and connectivity up to the borderline. The Chinese troops have roads up to their last posts facing Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh and Demchok and Fukche in Ladakh. The Indian troops have to cover distance on foot in most of the places.

“We are nowhere close to them. Their airfields are active as well, while our airfields are in disuse after the first few landings in 2008 and 2009,” sources said.

India pursued an unspoken policy post-1962 war with China. Under the policy, Delhi decided not to develop infrastructure, especially roads, up to the LAC. This was done to ensure that in case Chinese troops breach the first line of defence, hostile roads and infrastructure ahead should greet them, making their forward movement difficult.

This strategy was changed in 2005 after a major hue and cry by local residents and the media that highlighted inadequate infrastructure in the border areas. Accordingly, the Centre woke up to the need of building infrastructure and raising its capacity building in the areas close to LAC that traverses 4057 km from Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir to Himachal Pradesh (Western), Uttrakhand (middle) and Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim (eastern) sectors of the border with China.

As many as 27 road projects were sanctioned. But only six of them were put into execution.