CAG takes up audit of India-China border roads

NEW DELHI: Amid India-China standoff in Ladakh, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has decided to take up an audit of the Border Road Organisation in its current year plan. The BRO was tasked to complete 61 road projects along the strategically important India-China border at a cost of Rs 4,600 crore by 2012. Four years past the deadline only 36% of roads were found to have been completed.
The last audit of BRO was completed in 2017 and tabled in Parliament in March that year. The federal auditor had then found that only 22 of the 61 roads were constructed at an enhanced cost of Rs 4,500 crore. The CAG scrutiny revealed that at least six roads with a length of 197 km were not fit for running specialized vehicles such as the Bofors guns due to steep gradients or inadequate turning radius.
Coming after three years, the performance audit of BRO is likely to raise some uncomfortable questions, on missing deadlines, enhanced cost and failure of the organization to meet the requirement of the Army that needs big artillery guns positioned at high altitudes travelling through these proposed all-weather roads.
“This non-completion/faulty specifications of works have a serious bearing on the operational capability of the armed forces in strategically sensitive areas. Road works executed by the BRO did not adequately meet the users’ requirement,” the audit had observed in its last report.
Within a few months of the tabling of the report, on a request from the Defence ministry, CAG brought down this report from its website and removed all references from press releases and other documents already posted on the auditor’s website that had mention of specific paragraphs which critically examined the construction of roads.
The government had identified at least 73 strategically important roads to be built in the India-China border areas. This was part of the much-needed infrastructure development in “inaccessible areas” where China had already developed roads and military infrastructure across the border. The BRO was given 61 road construction projects covering 3,400 km at a cost of Rs 4,644 crore.
The auditor in its 2017 report had highlighted inadequacies such as failure of the BRO to carry out reconnaissance and survey properly. “The gradient, soil classification and alignment of the road taken at the time of carrying out the survey were at wide variance with the conditions encountered during the execution. These variances adversely affected the execution of the India-China border roads and led to delay as well as cost overruns,” the auditor had noted.