Tag: Border Roads Organisation (BRO)

All 15 Bodies Recovered From Sumna Avalanche Site Were BRO Workers From Jharkhand

The avalanche hit Sumna on Friday last week, after which, BRO workers engaged in a project there went missing.

Gopeshwar: The search operation for workers who went missing after the avalanche in Sumna near the India-China border in Chamoli district continued on Tuesday. All 15 bodies recovered from the site are of BRO workers from Jharkhand.

After a post mortem of the bodies in Joshimath, they were sent to Shrinagar Garhwal Hospital for embalming by the district administration.

All the bodies recovered so far have been identified, Chamoli District Magistrate Swati S Bhadauria said.


They were all BRO workers from Jharkhand, she said.

Talks have been held with the Jharkhand government for handing over the bodies to their families and it is likely to be done by Wednesday through the BRO, she said.

The road from Malari to Sumna is being cleared of snow. The avalanche hit Sumna on Friday last week after which BRO workers engaged in a project there went missing.

How True Is the Claim that Modi Govt Is the Architect of the Border Roads Project?

The shift from a defensive mindset to a more aggressive posture towards China was conceptualised by the UPA. It’s now up to Modi to use these tools effectively to restore the status quo on the LAC.

Indian and Chinese forces are facing off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), and the Modi government is fighting, with a vengeance, to control the political narrative.

In his remarks on June 19 (audible from the 4.50 minute mark onwards here), Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted that his government’s border infrastructure improvements had strengthened India’s ability to deal with China’s intrusions. Pro-government voices picked up this claim in print and on TV, painting the Modi government as a pioneer in border development.

This is motivated fiction.

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) conceptualised, planned and implemented the India China Border Roads (ICBR) programme as part of a broader build-up against a rising China. There was continuity in the policy until the June-August 2017 Doklam standoff, after which alarm bells went off in South Block and the Modi government poured more resources into the ICBR programme. This was a compulsion, not strategic foresight.

The Vajpayee government in 1999 made a start by approving 13 new border roads, but the decisive break from a defensive mentality occurred in 2006 when the UPA reversed a longstanding policy of keeping border infrastructure underdeveloped so as to prevent advancing Chinese troops from using it. Then foreign secretary Shyam Saran headed a task force that made three fields trips up and down the LAC to understand the ground reality. It produced a detailed plan to build a total of 73 ICBRs, concentrated in areas where Indian and Chinese perceptions of the LAC differed.

One priority was to build roads and tunnels to connect Himachal Pradesh to Ladakh and to ensure that the latter could be reinforced even if the Kashmir Valley were unavailable. The UPA also decided to build the 1,850-km Trans-Arunachal Highway along the northern bank of the Brahmaputra. Crossing a large number of the river’s tributaries, the highway would seamlessly connect border roads across Arunachal Pradesh to offset China’s advantages in the region.

Also read: India Has Known About the Chinese Threat in Ladakh for Years. So Why Are We Unprepared?

To prevent enemy forces from using the new infrastructure, the UPA sanctioned two new mountain divisions with some 50,000 troops and stationed armoured units in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. It activated four advanced landing grounds in Chushul, Fukche, Demochok and Daulat Beg Oldi and deployed longer-ranged Su-30MKI warplanes to Tezpur, Chabua and Bareilly. Contrary to some claims, all of these steps had Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s approval.

The Indian Navy held naval exercises with the US Navy in the vicinity of the East China Sea in 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2014. The UPA sanctioned the raising of a mountain strike corps of 70,000 troops in 2013, a decision the Modi government put on hold in 2018 on financial grounds. In his 2013 book Cold Peace, Jeff Smith of the Heritage Foundation describes all these steps as “the most significant permanent buildup of Indian forces across the LAC since the 1960s”.

Indian army trucks move along a highway leading to Ladakh, at Gagangeer in Kashmir’s Ganderbal district June 17, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Danish Ismail

The ICBR programme took considerably longer to build than anticipated. Reasons included the harsh climate and terrain, difficulties in acquiring land and natural disasters such as floods in Leh (2010) and in Jammu and Kashmir (2014) and the Sikkim earthquake (2011). The Border Roads Organisation (BRO), responsible for 61 of 73 roads, was also spread thin among too many projects. By March 2016, it had spent almost its entire ICBR budget of Rs 4,644 crore and completed only 22 roads (and connected another 21).

In 2013, the UPA took several decisions to improve BRO effectiveness. According to a senior official in the previous government, it postponed their implementation after the Election Commission’s model code of conduct came into operation, allowing the Modi government to claim them as its achievements.

These were to:

  • Grant “general approval” in four states for the relaxation of forest clearance norms for strategic projects built within 100 km of the LAC, implemented on July 4, 2014. In 2013, the UPA had similarly relaxed forest clearance norms for “critical” infrastructure in Naxal-affected areas.
  • Reduce the number of non-strategic roads under construction by the BRO and hive off less critical border roads to a new civil corporation; the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation was incorporated on July 18, 2014.
  • End dual control of the BRO by the Defence and Highways ministries that had slowed decision-making and contributed to a funds shortage; this was implemented from the 2015-16 financial year and helped increase the flow of funds to the BRO.

Also read: China’s Intrusion in Ladakh Was Not Treachery But Surprise, And It Shouldn’t Have Been One

As the chart below shows, these reforms helped the BRO absorb funds better and speed up the pace of ICBR construction from 2016.

The number of completed ICBRs rose from 17 in 2014 to 28 in 2017 to 36 in 2019. Completion dates continued to be postponed, but progress was evident.

The big-spending jump came in the wake of the 2017 Doklam crisis. China’s aggressive military reaction convinced the government that it faced a more imminent threat than previously anticipated. It allocated an additional Rs 3,483 crores to the ICBR programme in August 2017 and delegated considerable financial authority to the BRO. In February 2019, BRO Director General Lieutenant General Harpal Singh stated that 67% of its workforce now stood deployed along China. Previous reforms and the post-Doklam push showed results: the road stretches completed went from 962 km in December 2017 to 2,501 km in December 2019.

Many of the unverifiable claims in pro-government reportage support the reading that the Doklam crisis forced the government’s hand. Those leaked numbers unfavourably contrasted the speed of ICBR formation cutting and road surfacing – important steps in road building – in 2008-17 versus 2017-20, as if the Modi government took office in 2017.

The Modi government can try its hardest to rewrite history, but the inescapable fact is this: it was the UPA that shifted from a defensive mindset towards China to a more aggressive posture. Now it’s up to Modi to use these tools effectively to restore the status quo on the LAC.

Amitabh Dubey is an analyst and Policy Coordinator of the All India Professionals’ Congress. Views are personal.

Duties of Forest Chief Who Said Andamans Road Project Didn’t Have Clearance Revoked

Environmentalists have argued that the construction of the Andaman Trunk Road would pose a threat to the Jarawa tribes.

Jaipur: Less than a month after the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) Tarun Coomar, in a letter, pointed out that the Andaman Trunk Road (ATR) widening project was being carried out without environmental clearance, his duties were taken away. As per the redistribution of work allocation order passed by the union territory administration on June 3, the work allocation against his name reads “nil”.

On April 29, Coomar had written to the secretary to Government of India, C.K. Mishra, saying that the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL) – the agency that had been handed the Andaman Trunk Road (ATR) widening project in 2018 – had not sought environment clearance before proceeding with construction work.

The ATR’s construction was carried out by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) in the 1960s and ’70s and then handled over to Andaman Public Works Department (APWD) for maintenance.

It stretches from Chidiyatapu in South Andamans to Diglipur in North Andamans, and has various tribal settlements all along it, including of the endangered Jarawa tribe.

Instances in the past have demonstrated that the ATR amounts to an intrusion into the lives of the Jarawas. In 2013, after a video showing women of the Jarawa tribe being paid to dance for tourists went viral, the Supreme Court banned the ATR for tourists. The court reversed its order only after the union territory administration submitted a notification declaring that area up to five kilometres radius near the Jarawa Tribal Reserve – starting from the Constance Bay in South Andaman to Lewis Inlet Bay in Middle Andaman – would serve as a buffer zone where any commercial or tourist establishment would not be permitted.

Also read: ‘Conflict of Interest’: Activists Criticise Andaman’s New Order on ‘Temporary’ Forest Land

Environmentalists had argued that the construction and widening of the ATR would result in a significant ecological impact on the spread of insects and weeds in the forest and would pose a threat to the Jarawa tribes.

Despite this, the ATR was later declared as a national highway and the task of its maintenance was assigned to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) for widening it to a standard of a national highway.

Coomar’s letter said that the ATR passes through two areas – tribal reserve declared under the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Protection of Aboriginal Tribes) Regulation and forest areas declared under Indian Forest Act, 1927 – that require environmental clearance.

A forest in Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Photo: Flickr/ Neelima V CC BY NC ND 2.0

The same was also communicated to the implementing agency (NHIDCL) in a meeting held on June 8, 2018, attended by the chief secretary of the Union territory, tribal and forest department, NHIDCL, district administration of South Andaman and department of environment and forests. However, the NHIDCL failed to pay attention to the clearance. “Despite several reminders and warnings, NHIDCL didn’t seek clearance and in 2019 and 2020, went ahead with the project,” the letter said.

The PCCF also stated in the letter that on February 20, 2020, the matter of the violation of the Forest Conservation Act was raised before the chief secretary in a meeting in which the managing director of NHIDCL was also present.

“There again, the Andaman and Nicobar administration completely ignored the fact that the law of the land had been blatantly and deliberately violated despite repeated warnings and intimations, including at the level of chief secretary. At that time, decision was to continue with the works. On insistence of PCCF, NHIDCL was asked to apply for clearance,” the letter stated.

The meeting concluded with the decision that NHIDCL could continue with the work and simultaneously apply for environmental clearance.

Also read: The Doctor’s Diary That Holds Clues About the Residents of North Sentinel

Senior officers in the Union territory, on the condition of anonymity, told The Wire that the NHIDCL has yet to apply for environment clearance.

In the letter, Coomar also said that the states must not be delegated the power to issue clearance through deliberations by a state forest advisory committee as it would be an attempt to legitimise the violation of the Forest Conservation Act.

V.K. Bahuguna, a retired forest officer associated with the Centre for Resource Management and Environment has written to the Supreme Court of India regarding the “nil” work allocation to the PCCF. “It is a case of removing an officer for not agreeing to allowing the road construction activities in violation of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980,” Bahuguna’s letter read.

Bahuguna further requested the forest bench of the apex court to consider the matter.