From Our Correspondent
GUWAHATI: Work on the country’s longest rail-road bridge (4.94 km) at Bogibeel in Dibrugarh in Assam over the Brahmaputra River is going on at full steam with a target for completion set before the end of the year, a source in the railway said.
The Indian Railways is constructing this bridge that will connect Dibrugarh in South about of Brahmaputra River to Dhemaji in North Bank of the river. Once the bridge is completed it will become much easier to go to Pasighat, the headquarter of East Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh.
Once the bridge is commissioned, it will reduce the distance between Dibrugarh and Arunachal Pradesh to a great extent. Now, one has to go from Dibrugarh to Arunachal Pradesh by train via Guwahati travelling more than 500 km. Once the bridge is completed, the same journey will be less than 100 km in distance.
The longest bridge in India has a three-lane road on top, and two railway lines below. The foundation of the bridge was initially laid in the year 2002 by the then Prime Minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The bridge is expected to boost the country’s defence on the east as it will facilitate faster connectivity to regions close to the India-China border in the Northeast.
Because of construction of the bridge, the NH-37 at South Bank and NH-52 at North Bank of the Brahmaputra River will be linked by a 29.47 km long national highway.
Bogibeel is a 100 percent welded bridge, and advanced technology from companies of Sweden and Denmark has been used for the construction of this bridge.
The budget allotted for the construction of this bridge was revised from Rs 3230.02 crore to Rs 4857 crore. The bridge has been constructed 32 m above the water level of the Brahmaputra River.