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Dedicated BRO men at work

Despite freezing temperatures in the region, the dedicated team of the Border Roads Organisation engineers is working relentlessly day and night to accomplish the task of the most ambitious Rohtang tunnel project in Kullu district.

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Dipender Manta

Despite freezing temperatures in the region, the dedicated team of the Border Roads Organisation engineers is working relentlessly day and night to accomplish the task of the most ambitious Rohtang tunnel project in Kullu district. 

The 8.8-km long tunnel will provide all-weather connectivity to the residents of tribal Lahaul-Spiti district, who are desperately waiting for the project to complete for the past many years.

A BRO officer told The Tribune: “This time, heavy snowfall and long winter season has affected the progress of the construction work outside the tunnel. We never expected such heavy snowfall. However, the work is in progress.”

“Around 450 workers and engineers of the BRO are engaged in the construction work inside the tunnel. They are working round the clock in below-freezing temperature. The north portal of the tunnel from Lahaul side is inaccessible after December because of heavy snowfall in the region. The construction work is in progress from the south portal i.e. Manali side,” the officer said.

He said: “The water ingress issue of Seri Nullah has been rectified, which delayed the project for years. Finally, we have succeeded in channeling the water ingress of Seri Nullah. Apart from this, lining work of the tunnel is going on round the clock inside the tunnel.”

The BRO has set its target to handover the tunnel to the nation in 2019, however, the completion of this project will depend over the weather and geological conditions in the coming days. The project is one of the world’s most challenging motorable projects at 3,000 metre above sea level and will provide all-season connectivity to the landlocked Lahaul valley from here in Himachal Pradesh.

Rohtang Tunnel is a highway tunnel being built under the Rohtang Pass in the eastern Pir Panjal range of the Himalayas on the Manali-Leh Highway. At 8.8 km length, the tunnel will be one of the longest road tunnels in India and is expected to reduce the distance between Manali and Keylong by about 60 km. The tunnel is at an elevation of 3,100 metre (10,171 ft), whereas the Rohtang Pass is at an elevation of 3,978 metre (13,051 ft).

“The excavation of the tunnel completed in October 2017, when the blasting from south and north ends joined and the completed tunnel may open in 2019, if situation remains favourable,” the BRO officer said.

He said the Manali-Leh Highway, one of the two routes to Ladakh, will be routed through the tunnel in 2019. The Rohtang Pass receives heavy snowfall and blizzards during the winter months and is open for road traffic for four months only in a year.

“The tunnel will keep the highway open during the winter. The other route to Leh is through Zoji La on the Srinagar-Drass-Kargil-Leh highway, which also gets blocked by snow for nearly four months in a year. The construction of the 14-km long tunnel under Zoji La has been planned. These two routes are vital to feed military supplies into the sub-sector west (facing Aksai Chin) and the Siachen Glacier,” he said.

Moravian Mission for the first time in 1860 talked about the possibility of a tunnel through Rohtang Pass to reach Lahaul and later, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru talked about a ropeway to Rohtang Pass, which again made a point of discussion among local tribes.

After almost 139 years of the first instance, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee became the Prime Minister, he agreed to construct a tunnel at Rohtang.

Arjun Gopal, a resident of Lahaul, was Vajpayee’s childhood friend. Locals insisted him to meet and speak about the tunnel to the PM. He along with two companions Chhering Dorje and Abhay Chand went to Delhi and after continuous discussions for about a year, the PM finally agreed and visited the headquarter of Lahaul in June 2000 and declared that the Rohtang Tunnel would be constructed. A feasibility study was conducted by RITES Ltd., an engineering consultancy company specialising in the field of transport infrastructure.

The project was conceived in 1983 and announced by the PM on June 3, 2000. However, the project did not take off. United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi laid the foundation stone of the project on June 28, 2010. The estimated cost of the project has been escalated from Rs 2,000 crore to Rs 4,000 crore because of delay in the completion of the project work.

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