Ministry of Defence approves delegation of Powers to BRO

New Delhi, Aug 20 : The Ministry of Defence has decided to delegate administrative and financial powers to the Border Roads Organisation right up to the level of Chief Engineer and Task Force Commander, so as to avoid delays on account of references between the Chief Engineer and HQ DGBR and also between HQ DGBR and the Ministry. According to a Ministry statement issued here today, 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 organisation in order to improve the pace of execution of works and to achieve the desired outcomes according to the requirement of the Armed Forces. In line with the aim to bring 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 up to Rs. 10 crore, that too only for departmental works, whereas the ADGBR had powers to accord administrative approval only up to Rs 20 crore for departmental works. For contractual works, all administrative approvals were given by DGBR, who 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 upto Rs 75 crore and DGBR upto Rs 100 crore. Further, 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 upto 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. UNI