GUWAHATI, April 15: How long does it take to construct a bridge on the unpredictable Brahmaputra, called the "Red river"?The Government and the people of Assam will say 14 years and five months. The Pancharatnas Naranarayan Setu, the third bridge on the Brahmaputra, which is also the longest one, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on Wednesday, about 14 years after the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi laid the foundation stone in November 1983.Inaugurating the bridge, the Prime Minister said the Rs 300-crore bridge would remove the communication bottleneck in the region. The Narnarayan Setu would provide a second route to the North-Eastern region and boost the coal-based economy of Garo hills in Meghalaya.Built at a cost of Rs 302 crores, the bridge has a length of exactly 2.284 kms, and connects Jogighopa of Bongaigaon district in the north with Pancharatna of Goalpara district in the south.The cost of the bridge has been jointly shared by the Indian Railways (20 per cent),Ministry of Surface Transport (40 per cent) and the North Eastern Council (40 per cent). The bridge has been named after Naranarayan, a valiant king of Assam.Among other things, the diversion necessitated by the need to save Deepar Beel - a lake in the western outskirts of Guwahati - from ecological disaster, delayed the completion of the bridge. The bridge would be a gateway to the region besides providing an alternate route to capital Guwahati and the mineral and forest resources of Meghalaya.The existing rail link in the north of Brahmaputra, owing to its proximity to the foothills of Himalayas, is susceptible to the vagaries of monsoon and flash floods, besides insurgency.The 928-km length of the Brahmaputra river in Assam is bridged only at two places, at Saraighat near Guwahati and at Kaliabhoora near Tezpur. While Pancharatnas Narnarayan Setu will be the third, construction has already commenced at Bogibeel near Dibrugarh for the fourth bridge.
