India’s bid to build quality all-weather roads along its border with China through to connect remote areas, move military weapons and equipment in the event of an aggression and ‘assert’ its territorial claims in the region near the Line of Actual Control (LAC) has been compromised due to poor quality of road construction and alleged irregularities in border roads works.

In the wake of heightened road and track construction work undertaken by China along India’s Northern and Eastern frontiers in 1997, India constituted a China Study Group (CSG) "to study the requirement of road communication along the China border for brisk movement of troops in case of any aggression". The idea was to assert the country’s territorial claims and upgrade logistic sustenance capability in these areas.

At the end of its study, the CSG identified 73 strategically important roads along the India-China border as Indo-China Border Roads (ICBRs). The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) in 1999 approved the construction of these roads and set the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) under the Ministry of Defence a tentative target of work to be completed between 2003 and 2006. The target was later extended to 2006-2012. But the work is far from over yet.

After more than 15 years since the project for the proposed 73 roads was first sanctioned, the country’s plans to have a network of high quality roads along its border with China remains a pipe dream.

The Indian military establishment which has tested the capability of some of these roads has found them unfit for the movement of heavy military guns like Bofors, Smerch and Pinaka. They have expressed their ‘dissatisfaction’ with the quality of the road works. Of the 73 sanctioned ICBRs projects, 61 cover a total length of 3409.27 km (Arunachal Pradesh ~ 1788.24 km; Himachal Pradesh ~ 116.99 km; J&K ~ 1093.14 km; Sikkim ~ 56.10 km; Uttarakhand ~ 354.80 km) ) scheduled to be completed at an estimated cost of Rs 4643.75 crore by 2012. The remaining 12 were to have been completed by local Central PWD, NBCC and state PWDS.

Some of the identified road projects with serious construction defects along the Sino-Indian border are: Bona-Gelling, Harong-Chushul Road, Sasoma-Saserla and Koyal-Photile-Chushmule-Zurasa.  

An audit of the project work by CAG has squarely blamed the poor quality, late completion, poor monitoring, over reporting of progress of works on the agencies entrusted with the execution of the ‘important’ project. As of March 2016, a total of 707.24 km as against 3409.27 km of roads at an estimated cost of Rs 4536 crore has been completed. This is ‘only 36 per cent’ of the total project covering only 22 of 61 roads under the project. Of the 24 roads examined in detail 17 were found to be substandard.

“Even six roads of length of 197 km which have been completed at a cost of Rs 164 crore were not fit for running of specialised vehicles/equipment such as Smerch, Pinaka and Bofors due to various limitations like steep radiant, less width, inadequate turning radius, effective alignment,etc.,” CAG in its report tabled in Lok Sabha on 10 March  has alleged.

The DG Border Roads in reply to the charges of various anomalies in the ICBRs projects on 15 July 2016 declined comment but maintained that the user, meaning Indian Army, has remained associated all along with the BRO. 

 The central audit body has now proposed a ‘Court of Inquiry’ expeditiously against the ‘erring officials’. It called for proper and timely action to resolve the defects or problems pointed out by the Chief Technical Examiner of the ICBRs project.