Braving serious challenges in hardterrains, the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) is confident ofbringing about a marked difference in road infrastructurealong India's frontiers in the next two years.
"By 2014, you will see a marked difference across theborders. Combining both big and small schemes, we are workingon more than 2,000 road projects (along the borders),"Director General, Border Road Organisation (BRO) Lt General SRavi Shankar told PTI.
These highways schemes are being executed through BRO's 18projects including Beacon, Arunank, Brahmank and Dantak forwhich it has a budgetary provision of about Rs 5,000 crore forprojects a year, Lt Gen Shankar said.
Elaborating on existing projects, he said while the BROwill construct a 6.5 km tunnel at Z-Morh between Gagangir andSonamarg on NH-1 in Srinagar, it is set to execute another 13km tunnel at Zojila to provide all-weather connectivity fromSrinagar to Leh, which remains cut-off for six to seven monthsduring winter.
Both the tunnels would be built at a total cost of Rs8,217 crore.
About Z-Morh tunnel, foundation stone of which was laid byRoad Transport and Highways Minister C P Joshi on Friday, theBRO chief said it took more than a year to prepare itsfeasibility study.
"It will be completed ahead of schedule" despite the factthat workers in the extreme conditions can work only for fourto five months as the area remains buried under snow for sixmonths, he said.
As per the schedule, the project is expected to becompleted by August 2018.