New Delhi, November 7
Defence Minister Arun Jaitley today said India was way behind schedule on making roads along the 3,488 km-long India-China frontier.

More than eight years since the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) was tasked with building 61 roads totalling 3,410 km, only 590-km stretch on 17 roads has been completed — which is 17 per cent of the target. The organisation works under the Ministry of Defence and the roads are classified as India-China Border Roads (ICBR).

Most of the roads were to be built in Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. Jaitley was addressing the first meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee attached to his ministry. He raised concern over country’s infrastructure in comparison to China, saying “our immediate neighbours have already enhanced infrastructure in proximity to the borders”. Jaitley said based on the strategic reality of the neighbourhood, the government was taking steps to create matching infrastructure on this side to realise country’s military potential.

Sources said a majority of the strategic road projects are several years behind schedule, making a mockery of the 2012 deadline set by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), the topmost security-related decision-making body at the Centre headed by the Prime Minister.

In 2006, the CCS had directed the BRO to complete the task in six years — by 2012. A more realistic deadline has now been set for 2016 and for some roads it is “beyond-2016”. Listing out the steps, he said the roads faced procedural delays, environmental clearance and shortage of hi-tech equipment to hasten the process of building roads in these critical areas.

“As far as India-China border roads are concerned, work on the balance roads structures was under way and in different stages of completion,” Jaitley told the committee. In 2006, the CCS had approved the construction of a road network along the entire India-China frontier. It was a reversal of an unwritten code under which the Government of India had deliberately not built a road network in the Himalayas, fearing a repeat of the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict. New Delhi feared the People’s Liberation Army of China, which is much bigger than the Indian Army, could use India’s own road network to rapidly advance down the Himalayas.

The Director General Border Roads, Lieut Gen. AT Parnaik said, the completion of roads has been affected due to various reasons.