No Media to be allowed to cover Bogibeel Bridge inauguration by PM Modi

December 23: Bogibeel, Asia’s second longest rail-cum-road bridge spanning 4.94 km in length, and India’s longest railroad bridge, will be thrown open for traffic by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday. But in an unusual move, citing ‘security reasons’ and on an ‘advisory’ issued by Special Protection Group (SPG), media persons from any regional or national media houses will not be allowed to cover the Bogibeel Bridge inauguration programme, except of course government media. This was intimated to all media houses at the eleventh hour. Prime Minister Narendra Modi would inaugurate the Bogibeel Bridge over River Brahmaputra, the longest rail-cum-road bridge in the country on December 25.

The message baring the media from the inauguration programme of Bogibeel Bridge bwas circulated in the  official whatsapp group of DIPR,Assam. This has led to wide criticism by several media houses across the nation. Many senior journalists expressed the view that this amounts to censuring the media totally from an event of national importance. However, on the flip side, some others have opined that the rising activities of ULFA (I) in Assam might have compelled the SPG to take this last moment decision. Whatever, may be the reason behind this stricture, the fact remains that the nation will now have to depend on Doordarshan and All India Radio to get news about this historic moment.

The Bogibeel bridge, situated 17 km downstream of Dibrugarh and Dhemaji, spans the Brahmaputra river and will connect the town of Dibrugarh in the south to Dhemaji to the river’s north. The bridge is located just over 20 km away from the Assam- Arunachal Pradesh border and is thus expected to act as an alternative to the Kolia Bhomora Setu, Tezpur in providing connectivity to nearly five million people residing in Upper Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.

The bridge, constructed at an estimated cost of Rs 5,900 crore, has a “serviceable period of around 120 years”. The bridge reduces travel time from Assam to Arunachal Pradesh to four hours and will cut out the detour of over 170 km via Tinsukia. It will also reduce Delhi to Dibrugarh train-travel time by about three hours to 34 hours as against 37 hours presently. The bridge has a two-line railway track on the lower deck and a three-lane road on the top deck. For the first time in Indian Railways, the girder has steel floor system for railway tracks and concrete for road.

The foundation of the bridge was laid in January 1997 by Prime Minister H.D.Deva Gowda but construction was inaugurated only in 2002 by Prime Minister, A.B. Vajpayee. After several years of slow progress, the Bogibeel bridge was granted a national project status by the Government of India in 2007 by Prime Minister Manmohan Sing. Accordingly, the Union Ministry of Finance funded 75% of the project costs while the Ministry of Railways has financed the rest. The design of Bogibeel bridge has 39 spans of 125 m and a superstructure of composite welded steel truss and reinforced concrete. It is designed to carry a double line 1,676 mm (5 ft 6 in) broad gauge railway on the lower deck and a 3-lane road on the upper deck.