Gangtok ,Sept16: Border Roads Organisation(BRO) has organised a tour programme of journalists and media people to the affected landslide zones of NH-31 A highway that connects to Sikkim to demonstrate the kind of work it is doing and engaged into portion of highway which have been breached by natural calamities and extensive damages it has suffered on these road links .
This tour was also in response to The Chief Minister, Dr.Pawan Chamling's letter to the Prime Minister, Dr.Manmohan Singh drawing his attention to the poor state of maintenance of the 31A National Highway and Border Roads Organisation(BRO) are not keeping required manpower and machineries to deal with natural calamities like landslides that occur frequently along the 31A NH.
Shri Dikshit has also informed to the journalists that it has adequate manpower and material or machineries to cope up with situation that often results in blocking the connectivity to Sikkim.However the scale of natural calamities and scale of damages it has caused to NH-31A is much more massive and bigger than historically they were dealing with. Mr.Dikshit apprised to all that recent incessant rains have triggered many major landslides along the 31 A NH in a number of places which has resulted in cutting off Sikkim completely from the rest of the country.However,it has enagaged men and machineries at all points to restore the highway at earliest.These important points are near Kali jhora and Coronation bridge, Hathisuray, Chitray, Labor -botey, Tar Khola located along the 31A NH and Lava-Algaraj road.It has also informed about the decision of Commissioner Jalpaiguri on meeting held on September 4th to handover portion of highway for maintenance to NHPC near 27th mile of Kalijhora area as it has only distablize the entire highway by building dam and compromising the stability of entire area in process although it would provide all help to NHPC if need arise.
It has also said that bailey bridge isbeing put-up at Tar Jhora similar to one it has build on zemu in northsikkim after last month flash flood damages.
