The government has increased budgetary allocations and spending to enhance border road infrastructure to bolster security along India’s border with China as well as to give a fillip to ties between New Delhi and other neighbours by improving connectivity to enhance trade and people-to-people ties, Union minister for external affairs S Jaishankar said on Wednesday.
Allocation and spending figures have seen a sharp increase since 2014 when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power at the Centre, he said. “The spending on border road infrastructure from 2008 till 2015 was ₹3,000-4,000 crore. This has gone up to ₹14,000 crore, and has nearly tripled,” said the minister while interacting with the media.
The spending to enhance connectivity along the border with China has been done for “obvious strategic reasons”, Jaishankar said. “One cannot do a thing without investing in infrastructure to ensure our forces are prepared better,” he said.
India and China have been locked in a border row for almost 33 months, with ongoing negotiations resulting in disengagement from a few friction points along the LAC (line of actual control) but the overall resolution of the dispute is still not in sight.
The minister said an obvious benefit of scaling up infrastructure has been the savings in terms of time and money for the armed forces. “Sixteen key passes that are used by the troops on the China border have opened in a record time, much ahead of the previous years, thus saving enormous funds in terms of air sustenance of cut-off areas, apart from immense economic and strategic advantages,” the minister said.
{{/usCountry}}The minister said an obvious benefit of scaling up infrastructure has been the savings in terms of time and money for the armed forces. “Sixteen key passes that are used by the troops on the China border have opened in a record time, much ahead of the previous years, thus saving enormous funds in terms of air sustenance of cut-off areas, apart from immense economic and strategic advantages,” the minister said.
{{/usCountry}}Some of the key strategic achievements, he said were the opening of the crucial Zojila axis that was extended till January 4, 2022 and an all-time record of the pass being opened in just 73 days against traditional timelines of 4-5 months. Between 2015 and 2022, India built 6,806km of roads, nearly double the 3,610km constructed between 2008 and 2014. “From 2014 onwards, 22.5km of bridges were built, which was earlier 7.4km,” Jaishankar said.
The government also worked on accelerating the construction of bridges along the border with China, including the Lai Bridge on the Along-Yingkiong road in Arunachal Pradesh in 240 days, and the Simar Bridge on the Migging-Tuting road in the same state, in 180 days, he said.
Work to improve connectivity with neighbouring countries including Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar was done with an eye on improving ties for better trade and bilateral ties he said.
“Along the other borders, the logic is neighbourhood first. We want trade and travel and what the Prime Minister says is ease of living. There is a need for infrastructure along those borders for development, contact and connectivity with them,” the minister explained.
To improve trade ties with Nepal, the government has equipped integrated check posts (ICPs) with modern facilities to ensure seamless movement of trade and people. The ground-breaking ceremony for implementation of a fourth ICP at Bhairahawa in Nepal (mirroring ICP Sunauli, Uttar Pradesh) is expected shortly, under Indian funding, the minister said.
The government is working on a proposal for establishing a railway link between India and Bhutan, which will be the first-ever cross-border rail link between the two countries. The ministry of railways is conducting a preliminary study on establishing the link.
The minister said though there is no ICP on the India-Bhutan border, the West Bengal government has offered 54 acres of land recently for development of ICP Jaigaon. The process of land acquisition in underway.