New Delhi, Aug 20 (IANS): The Defence Ministry on Sunday announced it has delegated administrative and financial powers to the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) to avoid delays in projects of road construction in the border areas.

The powers have been entrusted to the officials up to the level of Chief Engineer and Task Force Commander to improve the pace of execution of works and to achieve the desired outcomes according to the requirement of the armed forces, a Defence Ministry statement said.

"The decision was taken aimed at avoiding delays on account of references between the Chief Engineer and Headquarter DGBR (Director General Border Roads) and also between Headquarter DGBR and Ministry," it said.

The Ministry, in consultation with the armed forces, would identify the roads to be entrusted to the BRO, which comes under the Ministry, to provide road connectivity to difficult and inaccessible regions in the border areas and fix priorities by approving the long term roll-on works plan and annual works programme for it, the statement said.

"The powers related to execution of works have been delegated to be exercised by different levels within the BRO. However, to ensure accountability, a MIS (Management Information System) is being developed for online monitoring of progress of works."

In line of transformational changes in the BRO, the Defence Ministry has revised various powers of delegation, the statement said.

As per the Ministry's revised order, a Chief Engineer of the BRO now can accord administrative approval up to Rs 50 crore, the Additional Director General, Border Roads up to Rs 75 crore and the DGBR up to Rs 100 crore for both departmental and contractual mode of execution.

Earlier, a Chief Engineer could only give administrative approval up to Rs 10 crore for departmental works, and the ADGBR up to Rs 20 crore. For contractual works, all administrative approvals were given by DGBR, who had powers only up to Rs 50 crore.

The Ministry also enhanced the powers of Chief Engineer for acceptance of bids with cost of contracts up to Rs 100 crore from Rs 10 crore and that of ADGBR up to Rs 300 crore from Rs 20 crore. Earlier, the contracts up to Rs 20 crore were sent to DGBR.

"With this delegation, the entire tendering process including acceptance of bids would be completed at the level of Chief Engineer or ADGBR for a majority of the contracts," the statement said.

The Ministry has enhanced the powers of Chief Engineer to accord administrative approval for outsourcing consultancy services up to Rs 2 crore from Rs 10 lakh, ADGBR up to Rs five crore from Rs 50 lakh and full powers beyond Rs 5 crore to DGBR from Rs 2 crore.

It has also allowed the DGBR to procure both indigenous and imported equipments up to Rs 10 crore, from the earlier Rs 7.5 crore for indigenous equipments and Rs 3 crore for imported equipment.