The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) of India has built three new strategic bridges near the Chinese border amid the ongoing standoff between the two country’s military forces.

The three bridges, located in Ladakh’s Nimu region, will enable the Indian armed forces to move tanks and other heavy artillery along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

According to local media, the work involved replacing a bailey bridge with a stronger structure that can support vehicles weighing up to 70t.

BRO executive engineer B Kishan was quoted by local media as saying: “This bridge is at kilometre 397. Earlier, there were three bottlenecks at kilometre 362, 361 and 397. This bridge has been constructed in a record time of three months.

“On the request of the army, we made a 50-metre-long steel structure bridge, which can carry any sort of load.”

The second bridge is located at the Basgo location in Nimu. The bridge was rebuilt to support the movement of heavy vehicles. It is expected to become operational soon.

BRO developed another bridge at Ule Topo to enable troop and materiel movement towards Leh and to forward areas in Eastern Ladakh.

A government-owned unit, BRO was established to develop and maintain India’s road network near the border areas. Overall, it is responsible for nearly 1,200km of the LAC in Ladakh, as well as more than 250km of Line of Control and Actual Ground Position Line with Pakistan.

Recently, the government increased the allocation for the maintenance of border roads managed by BRO from Rs300m ($4m) to Rs1.2bn ($16m).

The ongoing standoff between India and China led to fighting last month in Galwan Valley, killing 20 Indian soldiers.

Following the clash, India cancelled several contracts with Chinese companies across different sectors. However, ongoing road projects are likely to remain unaffected.