Construction of 39 Border Out Posts along Indo-Pak border delayed

NEW DELHI: Construction of 39 Border Out Posts ( BOPs) along the Indo-Pak border to check attempts of infiltration have got delayed by a year due to problems like land acquisition and public protests.

According to Home Ministry data, there are 609 BOPs along the 3,323-km-long border which runs through Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir.

About two years ago, the government had sanctioned additional 126 BOPs, including upgrading of 38 BOPs in J&K, to reduce the distance between two posts to 3.5 km as the frontier is characterised by infiltration attempts by terrorists, smuggling of arms, ammunition and contraband.

"The project was targeted to be completed by 2013-14. However, the work has been spilled over due to constraints like public protests, delay in the land acquisition and statutory clearances," a Home Ministry official said.

Construction work of all the 126 BOPs has been awarded to CPWD. Construction activities in 46 BOPs have been completed and work is in progress in 41 BOPs.

However, construction of remaining 39 BOPs got delayed due to problems like public protests and delay in land acquisition, the official said.

Of the sanctioned 126 BOPs, 64 have been alloted for Gujarat, 38 for J&K, 23 for Rajasthan and one for Punjab.

In addition to the 126 sanctioned BOPs, 70 more BOPs were sanctioned under the composite scheme for Gujarat sector of the Indo-Pak border.

Of these, 54 BOPs have already been constructed and construction work is in progress for another two but work has not started for remaining 14 BOPs due to inundated land area.