By Ashok B Sharma
India has decided to build 558 roads totaling 27,986 km by 2030 at a cost of over Rs 50,000 crore along the borders with China and Pakistan. India stands justified in building these roads on land under its possession. It is not making any construction on land illegally occupied by China or Pakistan.
The proposed India-China frontier highway, that will be monitored by the Home Ministry will run parallel along the China border and will be 1,800 km long with an estimated cost of about Rs 40,000 crore.
The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) has been tasked to build 277 roads with a total length of 13,100 km at a cost of Rs. 24,886 crore in the first phase. Another 281 roads with a length of 14,886 km and costing Rs. 25, 268 billion would be built as part of the second phase.
Though the original plan was to complete the first phase of the project by 2012, the work did not proceed at the desired pace and may get stretched to 2015. The second phase was to be completed by 2022, but it would now extend up to 2030.
Under the first phase, the BRO has completed 29 roads. Work is in progress on 168 more roads and construction is yet to start on 80 roads. The second phase of the border roads project too has started, with work on 11 roads totalling 876 km in progress. Maximum efforts will be made for 73 India-China border roads by moving 61 units of BRO to Jammu and Kashmir, seven units to Himachal Pradesh, 33 units to Uttarakhand, 46 units to Arunachal Pradesh and 21 units to Sikkim to ensure timely completion of the roads.
In the eastern sector, the proposed highway will pass through Tawang, East Kameng, Upper Subansiri, West Siang, Upper Siang, Dibang Valley, Desali, Chaglagam, Kibito, Dong, Hawai and Vijaynagar in bordering areas of Arunachal Pradesh.
A similar project – the Trans-Arunachal highway, announced by the erstwhile UPA government in 2008 to connect the middle of the state – is moving at a snail’s pace with only 230 km of 2,400 km project completed so far. About 80 critical border roads have been stuck for many years due to environmental hurdles. These include crucial GS (General Staff) roads that link border outposts and camps to the main roadhead. In all, around 6,000 km of critical road stretches which were stuck can now be expedited. Approximately 5,000 hectares of land in the eastern sector mostly Arunachal Pradesh, have been held up due to environmental hurdles.
As per the Parliamentary Standing Committee report, the government has plans to undertake construction of 73 roads on operational significance along the India-China border in Phase I. Of these, 46 are strategically significant, being constructed by the Defence Ministry, and 27 roads running through 805 kms are being funded by the Home Ministry at Rs 805 crore for effective movement of the Indo-Tibet Border Police force. As many as 26 ITBP priority roads are currently under construction along the Indo-China border.
In the eastern sector, stakeholders like Defence Ministry and Ministry of North East Affairs will also be roped in for the project. Further an industrial corridor is slated to be constructed in southern Arunachal.
The government has already given its nod for the expansion of Project Seabird – the country’s largest naval base – that had been stuck for three years, and is also likely to rule favourably towards setting up of a Naval base at the Narcondam islands in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
India’s boundary with China was well defined by the erstwhile British colonial rulers by drawing the Johnson Line and the McMahon Line. In 1865, the British rulers sensing likely expansionist plans of then Czarist Russia and the Middle kingdom drew India’s northern boundary in the Ladakh region with Tibet which extended beyond the Kuen-Lun (Kunlun) mountains up to Khotan and included the Aksai Chin desert and linked Demchok in the south with the 18,000 feet high Karakorum pass in the north. This is popularly called the Johnson Line drawn by WH Johnson of the Survey of India. It included Shahidulla in far off Karakash valley about 400 km from Leh.
Though Jammu and Kashmir was an independent kingdom, the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar gave British the responsibility of its security. This made Britain responsible for J&K’s northern and eastern borders with Sinkiang and Tibet.
It is a wise decision of the Indian government to give fast track environmental clearances for construction of border infrastructure. It was due to lack of proper border roads India could not push out Chinese invaders in 1962 and prevent Pakistan from illegally occupying parts of Jammu and Kashmir. (IPA Service)