Assam: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Tuesday, inaugurated the Bogilbee Bridge which is the longest Indian railroad bridge.
Bogilbee Bridge is India's only fully welded bridge, with the double-decker structure comprising two railway lines on the lower deck and a three-lane road on the upper. It is strong enough to withstand movement of heavy military tanks.
The Bogibeel bridge will connect the southern bank of the Brahmaputra river in Assam's Dibrugarh district with Silapathar in Dhemaji district, bordering Arunachal Pradesh.
The total construction cost works out to Rs 5,900 cr. It has been built by the Hyderabad-based Navayuga Engineering Co. Nearly 80,000 tonnes of steel plates were delivered for the project via a combination of rail and road transport, while a 1,000 tonne hydraulic jack and strand jacks linked with the substructures were used for moving steel trusses over the pillars.
It took 21 years to be completed. In January 1997, the then-PM HD Deve Gowda laid the foundation stone for the project. In 2002, the construction work for the bridge was inagurated by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Now, after twenty one years PM Narendra Modi has inaugurated it today.
It will also help in reducing travel time from Assam to Arunachal Pradesh to four hours, and Delhi to Dibrugarh by about three hours. It will also reduce the distance to the North East by 165 km and thus helping in saving fuel worth Rs 10 lakh per day in the region. More importantly, Bogibeel is seen as an attempt by India to notch up the defence requirements along the Sino-Indian border.