Facelift of 230-km Arunachal Pradesh border road completed in 5 years

ITANAGAR: The Border Roads Organisation has given a facelift to the fragile and landslide-prone 230-km Roing-Hunli-Anini road, particularly the 9-km long Andolin bypass, and opened it to vehicular movement after five years of hardwork.

"It took almost five years to open this bypass due to its toughness. Nevertheless, our team of dedicated officials and labourers worked till the last to open the route in March last," 752 GREF Commander Girish Prasad Singh said yesterday.

In order to expedite the project, the 725 BRTF, based at Khonsa (Tirap), was shifted to Roing in (Lower Dibang Valley) in 2012, he said. Owing to the terrain and altitude, the Roing-Hunli-Anini road still remains cut off from the rest of the state during monsoon. The 62 RCC was, therefore, permanently based at Hunli, 9 km from Roing, to monitor and repair the road whenever the need arose, he said.

The usual challenges include the frequent change of course of the river Deopani during rains, mudslides and landslides on the 81.6 km road between Roing and Hunli and the 81.1 km Hunli-Anini road during rians.

Sources in the 752 BRTF said a proposal for a double-lane road had been taken up to connect Anini with all-weather roads. Once it was in place, it would aid military deployment and fortify the socio-economic situation of the civilians. The diversion from the 16 km point on the Roing-Hunli road, known as Greenfield alignment, would run along the bank of the Dibang river and join the Hunli-Anini road at the 21.5 km point, the sources said.