Malkangiri: Senior officers of Odisha Police and BSF had a review meeting at the BSF camp near under-construction Gurupriya bridge over the Janbai river in the cut-off areas of Odisha’s Malkangiri district on Thursday afternoon.
The bridge is nearing completion and likely to be opened for people tentatively by the second week of May.
Sources said IG (Operation) RP Koche had a meeting with the BSF IG (Operation), Odisha, Ashwin Kumar Singh and senior IPS officer and SOG Commandant Anirudh Singh about the safety and security of the newly constructed bridge, which is under the Maoist radar.
Taking note of the intelligence inputs that the Maoists are planning to blow up the bridge, the meeting discussed the operations to be launched by the district police and the BSF personnel against the ultras in the nearby areas in the coming days, setting up of more BSF camps and facilitation of government-sponsored welfare programmes with basic amenities like road communication to interior villages, electricity and supply of drinking water to the tribals. This apart, strategies to dissuade the tribals from joining the banned outfit and bring them to the mainstream were also discussed at the meeting.
The team also had a meeting with the BSF jawans of the 8th Battalion at the camp near the bridge. The team later reviewed the situation in the periphery areas.
While the Works department has installed hi-max lights on all sides of the bridge, the process of installation of CCTV cameras at the vantage points of the bridge is underway, the sources added.
Besides, there will be 24×7 webcasting of the bridge for which six high-resolution night vision cameras would be used. Specific instructions have been given to the Works department for putting up hi-max lights along the bridge and its periphery to ensure proper webcasting at night.
The 910-metre long bridge and 1200-metre approaching road on either side is being executed by Kolkata-based Royal Infraconstru Limited at an estimated cost of Rs 172 crore. The work began in 2014 with the deployment of the BSF personnel at both ends of the bridge.
Sources said the construction of the bridge, which was scheduled for completion by November last year, has been delayed by nearly seven months due to the technical snags some of its piles had caved in due to the fall in the water level of the river forcing the engineers to change the construction design.
The bridge will connect 151 villages with a population of about 30,000 spread over seven panchayats in the cut-off area of Chitrakonda to the mainland.
The security personnel will have a tactical advantage after completion of the bridge.
The foundation stone of the bridge was laid in 1982 by the then chief minister JB Patnaik and again by chief minister Naveen Patnaik in 2000.
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