Defence Primer

Building India’s Way to a “Leading Power”
In a written reply in the Parliament on December 18, 2015, Defence
Minister Manohar Parrikar said that the government had taken note of
China’s infrastructures along the border and with that in mind has “prepared
a holistic and comprehensive plan to develop and upgrade infrastructure
along the Indo-China border to meet the operational requirement of defence
forces”.
Seventy three roads have been identified as strategic Indo-China Border Roads
(ICBR), out of which 61 roads have been entrusted to BRO with a length of
3417 kms. Out of 61 ICBRs with BRO, 21 roads of length 661.6 km have
been completed, he said.
Meanwhile the Ministry of Home Affairs has approved construction and upgradation
of strategic roads on the Indo-Nepal border after consulting the
respective state governments. This consists of 1377 km of strategic roads in
the States of Uttarakhand (173 km), Uttar Pradesh (640 km) and Bihar (564
km).To accelerate the process the land required for construction of the roads
will be acquired by the state governments.
Further, three roads of total length 202.65 km namely Pithoragarh-Tawaghat,
Tawaghat-Ghatibagarh, and Ghatibagarh-Lipulekh are entrusted to BRO for
development in the State of Uttarakhand nearer to Indo-Nepal border, the
government informed Parliament late last year. In this case 282 hectares of
land, both public and private, has already been acquired and transferred to
BRO considerably speeding up the process.
On the time frame for the project, Minister of State for Defence Rao Inderjit
Singh said that road projects along China border would be completed by
2018 which is an ambitious target. 2
Advanced Landing Grounds (ALG)
Seventy three roads
have been identified
as strategic Indo-
China Border Roads
(ICBR), out of which
61 roads have been
entrusted to BRO
with a length of
3417 kms.
The Indian Air Force has taken up a major program to active ALGs along the
Eastern sector and similar plans are in the works for the Western border as
well. These will be crucial in rapidly inducting troops in forward areas in the
event of a standoff while larger formations mobilise at a slower pace. They
also provide a base for fighter aircraft flying from the hinterland to refuel and
strike deep inside Tibet or Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK).
In August 2013 the IAF landed a C-130J Super Hercules on the freshly activated
air strip at Daulet Beg Oldie and since then things have moved forward afters
some delays. Work on other ALGs too got a push after massive construction
work on the Chinese side. So far seven ALGs have been operationalized in
Arunachal Pradesh under a Rs. 720 crore project significantly reducing the
response time to transgressions in light of the non-existent road network.
Senior IAF officials had said that except Tawang all other seven ALGs were
ready. The latest one to be activated was Walong in addition to Mechuka,
Vijoynagar, Tuting, Passighat, Ziro and Aalo. The added feature is that can
handle operations at night and are also expected to be permitted for civilian
use boosting connectivity.
63