Silchar, Sept. 1: The Union surface transport and national highways ministry has asked the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) to speed up its efforts to develop the crucial 260-km National Highway 53, linking this town with Imphal.

N.K. Singh, commandant of the 36 Border Roads Task Force (BRTF) under the BRO, said here that Delhi had cleared a slew of short and long-term plans of the task force to keep the NH 53 traffic-worthy all through the year. He added that the schemes for upgradation would include converting, in phases, the highway into a double-laned road, rebuilding at least 21 damaged bridges along it and improving the over-all riding quality.

The short-term schemes, pegged at nearly Rs 9 crore, will focus on rebuilding the portions that have been badly damaged in the last few years when the road?s maintenance suffered because of militant activity along the highway.

Singh added that the first phase of double-laning the 55-km stretch between Makru and Jiribam would cost Rs 55 crore. In the second phase, the widening of the road will be carried out between Barak and Makru, a distance of about 41 km.

The necessity to upgrade the highway, which had been almost closed to traffic for the past seven years because of militant activity, was felt during the recent 52-day economic blockade imposed by Naga students in Manipur on the other road to Imphal, NH 39. Though the distance between Lower Assam and Imphal gets increased by 100 km while travelling via first NH 44 and then NH 53, the truckers are preferring it as an alternate route to Imphal. More so because NH 53 is now under the hawk-eyed surveillance by army, paramilitary forces and Manipur police. As a result, the militants are being kept at bay.

The blockade also forced the Centre, in course of an inter-ministerial meeting in New Delhi early this month, to reach a decision to develop NH 53 as the principal road link connecting land-locked Manipur with the outside world, especially to ferry essential commodities.

Earlier, Manipur was dependent on NH 39 for ferrying essential commodities to the state from Assam and other parts of the country. But road traffic along this road has, of late, become uncertain in the wake of the Naga blockade.