250 persons from state working on Uttarakhand BRO projects

RANCHI/DUMKA: Around 250 workers from the tribal-dominated Santhal Pargana have been taken by the Border Roads Organization (BRO) to work in road construction projects in Uttarakhand along India’s border with China.
The men, who left from Dumka railway station on a special train on June 13, were put under quarantine in Dehradun for seven days before they were taken to Joshimath in 11 buses and put to work, sources in the Jharkhand government said.
In all, around 1,600 men were taken to Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir on the special train after offloading a few men in Roorkee. A large number of the remaining 1,350 men will be pressed into BRO projects in Ladakh, while many will be working in Himachal Pradesh.
Around 60 roads are to be built by the BRO along the Indo-China border. “The men who disembarked in Udhampur will be taken to the project sites in Ladakh after their 14-day institutional quarantine is over,” a source in the Hemant Soren government said.
Ladakh has been on the boil due to the month-long standoff between Indian and Chinese troops over territory, which led to a skirmish 15 between in which 20 Indian soldiers, including two from Jharkhand, were martyred.
The Jharkhand government allowed BRO officials to recruit workmen from the state after it promised higher wages and better facilities. However, the skirmish has shelved BRO’s efforts to send more workmen in the region.
“The registration process (of persons for working in BRO projects) have been withheld temporarily keeping in mind the situation along the order. It will resume after instructions from the state government,” Dumka deputy commissioner Rajeshwari B said. In all, 12,000 workmen were to be taken to the border areas by special trains in between June 13 and July 4.