Larsen & Toubro (L&T), the infrastructure major has announced that it has secured a large contract to construct the country’s longest road bridge across river Brahmaputra connecting Dhubri in Assam to Phulbari in Meghalaya.

The contract is bagged by the company’s subsidiary L&T Construction. As per the company, a large contract is worth Rs. 2,500-5,000 crore. “The 19 km-long bridge will be built along National Highway 127-B and will feature a navigation bridge of 12.625 km, approach viaducts of 3.5 km on the Dhubri side and 2.2 km on the Phulbari side, connected with approach roads and interchanges on both sides,” stated L&T in a statement.

The bridge will have huge strategic relevance by improving the connectivity of the northeastern states with the rest of the country and establish a vital link between Assam and Meghalaya by reducing the distance between the two states by 250 km, it said.

The contract is bagged by the company’s subsidiary L&T Construction

Currently, the travel between Dhubri and Phulbari is by ferry that takes up to 2.5 hours. “This is an extremely challenging project, and we thank our client, National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd for reposing confidence in our capability to build such a defining piece of infrastructure,” said S V Desai, Whole Time Director & Senior Executive Vice President (Civil Infrastructure), L&T.

According to S V Desai, the bridge will not only be an important passage for offering easier access to the North Eastern international borders but will give a huge fillip to trade and commerce in the region for the accelerated development of all the North Eastern States especially Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and the Barak Valley.

Recently, L&T also won a mega-contract worth more than Rs. 7,000 crore from the National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) to construct the 87.57 km long stretch of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail or the bullet train project. The company emerged as the lowest bidder in the auction of the C9 project package, which comprises the stretch of a viaduct between Vadodara and Ahmedabad, and the Anand/Nadiad Station. L&T was last seen trading at 1.02 percent lower at Rs. 1123 apiece on the BSE.