Deccan Herald
Ratnadip Choudhury
September 13, 2015
In a major development, the Arunachal Pradesh government on Friday decided to immediately start building new roads to the remotest villages on the India-China border, which can only be reached after trekking for days.
The decision was taken in a cabinet meeting held in state capital Itanagar, chaired by Chief Minister Nabam Tuki. According to government sources, the Cabinet agreed to recommend a proposal for connectivity to unconnected habitations on border areas of the state under Border Area Development Programme (BADP) as a special case.
As may as 72 roads in 23 border blocks of 12 districts of the state would come under the programme. It shall cover 2098.40 km of roads with 219 bridges covering 227 unconnected remote villages right at the McMohan Line that divides India and China. The estimated cost of the project is Rs 3,345.03 crore, government sources further added.
Last week, Chief Minister Nabam Tuki had held several rounds of meeting with central ministers on the border area development issue.
According to Arunachal Pradesh government sources, the state government has sent several reports to the Centre over the year in terms of how the border population is moving towards the towns duo to lack of development and this might lead to threat to the security since the border population also helps the security forces in terms of intelligence in border guarding.
Arunachal Pradesh government spokesperson Bamang Felix also informed that the state Cabinet has decided to suspend the operation of Pawan Hans Helicopter Service in the state till completion of inquiry into the recent incident of chopper crash at Tirap which claimed three lives, including the then Tirap Deputy Commissioner the late Kamlesh Joshi.
The state government has already written to the Ministry of Home Affairs to conduct a thorough inquiry into the incident to unearth the facts behind repeated accidents of Pawan Hans Helicopters in the state.
