Union Home Secretary L C Goyal reviews status of bridges damaged by Naxals

NEW DELHI: The Centre today ordered expeditious completion of 15 bridges damaged by Maoists in six states as these are critical infrastructure in the Left Wing Extremism-affected states.

At a high level meeting, Union Home Secretary L C Goyal, reviewed the status of the 15 bridges with the Chief Secretaries of the state governments and the senior officers of the concerned Union Ministries.

The Home Secretary asked the representatives to speed up the completion of works while removing the bottlenecks as these 15 bridges are very important from security as well as development angles and any delay is a cause of concern for the Union Home Ministry, an official statement said.

Out of the 15 bridges, one is in Andhra Pradesh, two in Chhattisgarh, four in Jharkhand, two in Maharashtra, five in Odisha and one in Uttar Pradesh.

During the meeting, pending works under the Road Requirement Plan Phase-I (RRP-1) and the issues relating to the proposed RRP-2 were also discussed.

Goyal asked all concerned to take every possible step to speed up the works within specific timelines.

The central government is committed to addressing the LWE problem by focusing on four-pronged strategy involving security-related measures, developmental efforts, ensuring of rights and entitlements of forest dwellers and management of public perception, he told the meeting.