Defence Ministry enhances financial powers of BRO

Speed Post News Network

New Delhi : Ministry of Defence has decided to delegate administrative and financial powers to the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) right up to the level of Chief Engineer and Task Force Commander to avoid delays on account of references between the Chief Engineer and Hqs Director General Border Roads (DGBR) and also between Hqs DGBR and the Ministry.

Functioning under the control of the Ministry of Defence since 2015, the BRO is engaged in road construction to provide connectivity to difficult and inaccessible regions in the border areas of the country. The Ministry of Defence intends to bring transformational changes in the organization to improve the pace of execution of works and to achieve the desired outcomes according to the requirement of the Armed Forces, according to a PIB release.

With a view to bringing in transformational changes in the BRO, various powers of delegation have been revised. According to the earlier delegation of powers, a Chief Engineer in the BRO could give administrative approval of works only upto Rs 10 crore, that too only for departmental works, whereas the ADGBR had powers to accord administrative approval only upto Rs 20 crore for departmental works. For contractual works, all administrative approvals were given by DGBR, which had powers only upto Rs 50 crore.

Enhancing the powers at all levels in the BRO, the Ministry of Defence has now approved that for both departmental and contractual mode of execution, a Chief Engineer of BRO can accord administrative approval up to Rs 50 crore, ADGBR up to Rs 75 crore and DGBR up to Rs 100 crore, according to the PIB release.

According to the earlier delegation of powers, a Chief Engineer in the BRO had the power to accept execution of contracts only up to Rs 10 crore, ADGBR had powers up to Rs 20 crore, beyond which all tenders had to be sent to DGBR. With the intent to speed up the tendering process, the Ministry of Defence has now enhanced the powers of Chief Engineer for acceptance of bids with cost of contract up to Rs 100 crore and that of ADGBR for cost of contract up to Rs 300 crore. With this delegation, the entire tendering process including acceptance of bids would be completed at the level of Chief Engineer/ADGBR for a majority of the contracts.