SRINAGAR: As many as 19 tunnels will be built in Jammu and Kashmir at a cost of Rs 25 lakh crore to boost road connectivity. It is expected to improve tourism and safety in the region.
Union minister for road transport and highways, Nitin Gadkari, said on Monday that once the tunnels are completed along the Srinagar-Jammu and Srinagar-Kargil highway, India will achieve connectivity between Kashmir and Kanyakumari in the true sense.
On Monday, after inspecting the work underway on the Zoji-la Tunnel, Asia's longest tunnel that will establish an all-weather connectivity between the Kashmir Valley and Ladakh, he said tourism will increase by many fold and job opportunities will rise when the tunnel is commissioned. Zoji-la Tunnel is a horseshoe-shaped single-tube tunnel that is 9.5 metre wide, 7.57 meter high and 14.2 km long. The 2-lane road tunnel will pass through the 11,575 feet high Zoji-la (pass) in the Himalayas between Ganderbal district of the Kashmir Valley and Drass town in Kargil district of Ladakh.
Gadkari said, “It is an important and historical tunnel (in the history) of India and the highest in Asia now which will be equipped with facilities like CCTV, radio control, uninterrupted power supply, ventilation, etc.” He said that the estimated cost of the tunnel which is being constructed using the New Austrian Tunnelling Method was Rs 12,000 crore but it was reduced by Rs 5,000 crore using modern technology. “It is for the first time in the history of India that the cost of a project has been reduced by Rs 5,000 crore,” he said, adding that it will be a Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition systems (SCADA) equipped tunnel.
In a road tunnel, SCADA plays a vital role in safety of users as the operator uses many modern devices that are servo-controlled by sensors and operate automatically according to predetermined thresholds continuously to determine its status-operational or faulty and/or its operating mode (automatic, manual, or stopped).
“As I said, on the completion of this tunnel and those being built along the Srinagar-Jammu highway, tourism in the region will go up by two to three times. Our Kashmir is better than Switzerland. Yeh Jannat hai (this is paradise),” he said.
Soon after visiting the Zoji-la Tunnel, Gadkari tweeted, “Meet Asia's largest tunnel – Zoji-la Tunnel, an engineering marvel with all-weather connectivity…With the development of the Zoji-la Tunnel, we aim to achieve all-weather hassle-free connectivity between Kashmir to Kanyakumari.”
He said after the tunnel is completed the average travel time to cross the Zoji-la (pass) that is three hours now will come down to 20 minutes. It will not only bring Ladakh closer to the Kashmir Valley but also help save fuel. He added the treacherous terrain of Zoji-la claimed many lives in accidents every year but after the tunnel is completed, the chances of such mishaps will be zero.
The officials of Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited (MEIL), that is executing Zoji-la Tunnel said that the work on it is going on at a rapid pace and the project is likely to be completed by December 2026. They said that, so far, 28 per cent work on the tunnel was completed.
