NEW DELHI: In a big relief to the residents of Lachen an important bridge connecting North Sikkim with the rest of the country was opened up on Saturday.
The bridge is equally important for the troops of the security forces.
Ministry of Defence in its release said, “The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) opened for traffic 360 feet long bailey suspension bridge over Teesta River in Munshithang near Chungthang town on Saturday.”
The 86 Road Construction Company (RCC) of 758 Border Roads Task Force (BRTF), under Project Swastik, commenced the construction of the bridge in October 2019 and completed it in January 2020.
The approach roads to the bridge have also been constructed. The bridge will give impetus to tourism and facilitate the movement of logistics for the Armed Forces deployed in forward areas.
In June 2019 a massive cloud burst had completely damaged a steel bridge of 180 feet span at the same location and had severed the lines of communication in North District of Sikkim.
The connectivity was kept open by routing the traffic through restricted Army land.
The movement in Sikkim is largely dependent on road communication as weather gets packed up very quickly.
Movement of the locals and the army and ITBP personnel often gets blocked due to flash floods and landslide.
Government has approved a five year (2018-23) Long Term Roll on Works Plan (LTRoWP) to concentrate simultaneously on the Northern and North-Eastern Borders for the construction/improvement for 265 roads of length 14224.12 kilometer, 4 Ditch cum Bund (DCB) of length 353.22 km and 4 bridges (Br).
Sikkim has 18 of them having a cumulative length of 601.18km which includes the three important 62 km Indo-China Border Roads (ICBRs).Of the 3488 km long Line of Actual Control (LAC) 220 km touches Sikkim.