Lack of coordination delays work on land ports across the border

As India is setting up a series of land ports to facilitate border trade with its neighbours, it is time to identify a single agency for construction of integrated check-posts (ICP) part-financed by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

The estimated ₹200-crore ICP at Raxaul (Bihar)-Birgunj (Nepal) border handles 80 per cent of the $7 billion trade with Nepal, with over 800 trucks crossing the border every day.

This is the first of its kind land border facility where both sides are supposed to have mirror facilities. The Indian side, promoted by the Land Ports Authority of India (LPAI) under the home ministry, was ready in June 2016, more than a year behind schedule. But, the facility couldn’t be operationalised as the construction of the MEA-funded mirror facility on the Nepalese side was inordinately delayed.

According to Ganesh Lath, a prominent Nepalese trader from Birgunj, the Indian authorities missed the December 2016 deadline and rescheduled the opening to March 2017.

Sources in LPAI confirmed that they are waiting for completion of the Nepalese part to operationalise the project.

This is no stray case. LPAI completed construction of the Indian part of the ICP at Jogbani (Bihar)-Biratnagar (Nepal) border, the second largest gate with Nepal, last year. But the infrastructure remains underused in the absence of matching facility at Biratnagar in Nepal to be built by MEA.

Information from Biratnagar suggests that the MEA was late in appointing the contractor. Now they have awarded the project, but construction is yet to begin. “The Nepalese part will take at least three years to complete,” a local importer said.

Unlike an airport or a sea-port, compatibility in processes on both sides of the border is a necessity in land ports. In view of this, India took the decision a few years ago to establish mirror facilities on both sides of the border.

For obvious reasons MEA is in charge of the project construction on foreign soil. But, what makes the project commissioning difficult is complete lack of coordination between the two agencies of the same government.

Land Ports Authority is not mandated to be involved in projects across the border. The advantage often goes to vested interests pointing out poor project execution ability of India.

Moreover, as is evident in Jogbani-Biratnagar, the whole purpose of setting up ICPs with mirror facilities are defeated by delay in implementation of part of the project.

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