Dibrugarh, March 3: The ambitious Bogibeel rail-cum-road bridge project is likely to be delayed by two years beyond the earlier schedule.
Only 30 per cent of the work has been completed on the Rs 1,762-crore project till date. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, while inaugurating work on the project at the Chowkidingee playground here on April 21, 2001, had appealed to the Railways to complete the construction work by 2006. The then Railway Board Chairman I.I.M.S. Rana had publicly assured that the bridge would be completed in six years.
Talking to a group of reporters at the project site yesterday, chief engineer C.R. Madhukar said only 1.5 lakh cubic metres of huge boulders could be collected till date. ?The total requirement is 15.5 lakh cubic metres of boulders to build the guide bund to protect the main embankments,? Madhukar said.
The Railways attribute the delay in collection of boulders to ?technical formalities? in dealing with the Arunachal Pradesh government. ?There have been some problems regarding collection of boulders, which we hope will be settled very soon. The necessary clearance from the ministry of environment and forests is likely within the next few weeks,? Madhukar said. He assured that the project would be completed within 2008 once ?the supply of boulders is normalised?.
The alignment work on the bridge, hyped not only as the future lifeline between the north and south banks of the Brahmaputra but also to serve a larger portion of the neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh, has been expedited. Both the Dibrugarh and Dhemaji district administrations are offering a ?sincere helping hand?.
?This is a dream project of none other than the Prime Minister and we are committed to ensuring that there is no hindrance from our side in handing over land to the Railways required for the mega project,? Dibrugarh deputy commissioner Niraj Verma said. Apart from the scheduled required land, the district administration had leased out a huge plot of 900 bighas to the Railways for boulder-stacking.
The construction of the rail-cum-road bridge will reduce the distance between Guwahati and Dibrugarh by 144 km.