A long-cherished dream of the people of Dibrugarh and Dhemaji districts in Assam was fulfilled on Tuesday with the inauguration of Bogibeel Bridge, the longest rail-cum-road bridge in the country, by the Prime minister Narendra Modi.
Spanning 4.94 km the bridge has raised hopes for faster economic development of the surrounding region where it has ended an age-old communication bottleneck.
It’s a historic day for the people of Dibrugarh and Dhemaji districts because people from both the banks of the river have faced lots of problems while crossing the river through often erratic ferry service. Now the people can easily cross over the bridge without losing much time.
“We are happy that after so many years of struggle, we have finally got a bridge over the Brahmaputra. It’s a historic day for us. We have to depend on ferry services and during the monsoon we have to face lots of problem because the ferry services remain disrupted but now we can easily cross the Brahmaputra over the bridge,” said Mina Pegu, a resident of Dhemaji.
The people had to wait for a longtime to listen PM Narendra Modi’s speech after the PM had inaugurated the bridge. The PM was given rousing welcome by a large number of people gathered there. Everybody was delighted to see PM Modi at the venue.
Surprisingly, the BJP-led government in Assam has not announced any name for Bogibeel Bridge so far. Recently, some organisations have demanded that the Bogibeel bridge should be named after iconic personalities of their choice.
“We are very much fortunate to see the inauguration of the Bogibeel Bridge. The work started in 2002 and the progress of the work remained so slow that we thought that it would not be inaugurated in our lifetime. We really thanked the PM Narendra Modi to expedite the work of the bridge after coming to the power,” Narendra Sonowal, an elderly person from Dibrugarh said.