The Defence Ministry has delegated more financial and administrative powers to the Border Roads Organisation in an effort to fast-track the completion of strategic roads near the Sino-Indian border.
The decision is expected to reduce the time delay running into several months, for administrative approval of the BRO projects and contracts.
According to the new defence ministry order, a Chief Engineer of the BRO can accord administrative approval for projects up to Rs 50 crore whereas for the Additional Director General Border Roads and Director General Border Roads, the new approval limits are Rs 75 crore and Rs 100 crore respectively.
Since 2015, the BRO is working under the Defence Ministry in order to cut down the red tapes that often delayed the projects by years. Previously BRO was under the administrative control of the Union Ministry of Road Transport while most of the projects were funded by the defence ministry.
The Defence Ministry has also enhanced the powers of the BRO Chief Engineer for acceptance of bids with the cost of the contract up to Rs 100 crore and that of the ADGBR for contracts up to Rs 300 crore.
“With this delegation, the entire tendering process including acceptance of bids would be completed at the level of Chief Engineer or DGBR for a majority of the contracts. The decision was taken a few days ago,” said an official.
The defence ministry has also enhanced the financial power of BRO top brass for granting consultancy services to external agencies and purchasing of equipment.
The DGBR has been given the power to procure indigenous or imported equipment up to Rs 100 crore. He has also been authorised to hire equipment up to three years for emergent situations.
The main purpose of overhauling the BRO is to accelerate the road construction near the Sino-Indian border as China rapidly improved its border infrastructure.
Out of 73 Indo-China border roads identified by the government, BRO’s responsibility was 61 roads on which progress has been was tardy so far.
These 61 roads were to be completed by 2012, but only 15 were completed by that time schedule and another 7 roads were readied by March 2016. For the rest, the probable date of completion has now been stretched to 2021.
Earlier this year, the Comptroller and Auditor General questioned the quality of several completed BRO roads, which were found unfit to carry weapons like Smerch rockets, Pinaka multi barrel rocket launcher and Bofors artillery guns.
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