Assam on Tuesday got India's longest rail-cum-road bridge, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened the 4.94-km-long strategically important project over the mighty Brahmaputra at Bogibeel.
The Bogibeel bridge, which was a part of the Assam Accord and sanctioned in 1997-98, is likely to play a crucial role in defence movement along the India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh.
The foundation stone of the project was laid by former prime minister H D Deve Gowda on January 22, 1997, while work commenced on April 21, 2002 under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government. December 25 happens to be Vajpayee's birth anniversary.
Because of the inordinate delay in implementation, the cost of the project escalated by 85 per cent to Rs 5,960 crore from the sanctioned estimated cost of Rs 3,230.02 crore. The total length of the bridge was also revised to 4.94 km from the earlier 4.31 km.
Realising its strategic importance, the central government had declared the construction of the bridge as a National Project in 2007, thereby assuring availability of fund for speedy construction.
Here are some of the highlights of the bridge:
IMAGE: A view of India's longest rail-road bridge, Bogibeel in Dibrugarh. Photograph: PTI Photo
1. The 4.9 km-long Bogibeel bridge on the Bramhaputra river is India's only fully welded bridge for which European codes and welding standards were adhered to for the first time in the country, said chief engineer Mohinder Singh.
2. The bridge reduces travel time from Assam to Arunachal Pradesh to four hours and will cut out the detour of over 170 km via Tinsukia.
3. It will also reduce Delhi to Dibrugarh train-travel time by about three hours to 34 hours as against 37 hours presently.
4. The bridge has a two-line railway track on the lower deck and a three-lane road on the top deck. For the first time in Indian Railways, the girder has steel floor system for railway tracks and concrete for road.
5. The bridge, constructed at an estimated cost of Rs 5,900 crore, has a "serviceable period of around 120 years.
6.The bridge is likely to play an important role in defence movement along the India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh. The three road lanes of the bridge can act as three landing strips for the Air Force.
7. The country's largest steel maker SAIL said it has supplied 35,400 tonne of steel for the construction of the bridge.
8. The bridge is part of infrastructure projects planned by India to improve logistics along the border in Arunachal Pradesh. This includes the construction of a trans-Arunachal highway on the north bank of the Brahmaputra, and new road and rail links over the mighty river and its major tributaries such as the Dibang, Lohit, Subansiri and Kameng.
9. The project took 30 lakh bags of cement -- enough to fill more than 41 Olympic swimming pools and 19,250 metres of reinforcement steel -- well over twice the height of Mount Everest.
10. "Early flood in the river Brahmaputra restricted the working season to a very short period of approximately five months - from November to March - and demanded huge mobilization of construction equipment," chief engineer Mohinder Singh told news agency PTI, explaining the delay in the project.
With inputs from PTI
