Malkangiri: Work on the Gurupriya river bridge, which aims to connect about 151 villages of seven panchayats with the district, has been extended for the fourth time after missing three deadlines.

An official said the bridge was expected to be operational by March end.

"Out of the 22 concrete slabs, work on 19 has been completed. We hope to complete the work before the March end," said the Malkangiri pubic works department's executive engineer Arun Kumar Sahu.

Sahu said that after the bridge work was completed, the 1,200 metres connecting roads would be constructed. Work on the 910-metre-long bridge had been started in 2015 with an estimated cost of Rs 172.58 crore. It was expected to be completed by June 2017. However, when the project missed the June deadline, officials claimed to complete it by September and then by November last year. But still, over 20 per cent work is pending. "Because of various reasons such as increase in water level in the river, the work got delayed," Sahu said.

Once completed, the bridge will serve as a lifeline to more than 20,000 villagers residing across the Balimela reservoir. Their only mode of connecting with the outer world is country boat.

This land is so remote that it is officially called as the "cut-off" area. Though the bridge assumes significance for the development of the region, Maoists had successfully stalled its work, as they were well aware that construction of the bridge would hamper their activities in the region.

Though the state government had floated tenders for the project on four occasions in the past one decade, it always drew a blank. This time, a Calcutta-based company bagged the work and the government had erected at least five BSF camps between Chitrakonda and Janbai to ensure that the Maoists did not intervene in the project.