Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, Sept 23: In a bid to improve connectivity and Maoist operations in Malkangiri border area, the state government has urged the Telangana government to start construction of bridge over river Sileru near Motu in the district.
The bridge over river Sileru near Motu on Malkangiri-Motu-Bhadrachalam road on the Telengana-Orissa border proposed in 2013 has been hanging fire, sources in the Works department said Wednesday.
“The bridge was approved by Union ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) under left wing extremism (LWE) scheme and allotted to Andhra Pradesh in 2013. The construction of the bridge is yet to start. As the road from Malkangiri to Motu has already been developed under the Vijaywada-Ranchi Corridor scheme, bridge over Sileru is essential to make inter-state connectivity complete and to ensure maintenance of law and order in LWE-affected region”, Orissa Chief Secretary GC Pati wrote to Telangana Chief Secretary Rajiv Sharma recently.
Pati sought Sharma’s intervention to remove bottlenecks of the project and commencement of the bridgework at the earliest.
The 250-metre proposed bridge is estimated to cost `17 crore, executive engineer of Malkangiri, Arun Kumar Sahu said. The approach road to the bridge has been constructed, he said.
The Centre had directed the AP government (which now comes under the provincial territory of Telangana) to implement it in 2013, a senior works department official told Orissa POST.
“Consequently, the AP government has awarded the project contract to an agency which has not started the work so far. As a result, the contract was cancelled and the project remains a non-starter till now,” the official said.
The official apprehended that the contractor might have faced threats from Maooists for which the project has been dumped. The example of the Gurupriya bridge, which was built under a security cordon, can be adopted while executing the project, they suggested.
When asked to explain the benefits the state may reap from the project, the official replied, “Now, incidents of Maooist attacks have come down in all parts of the state excluding the Malkangiri area. Due to non-availability of road connectivity, the state has been facing problems in bolstering Maoist operations on the border area. The bridge can facilitate combining operations on the border.”
