Table of Contents
What’s happening?
- World’s longest highway tunnel beneath 16,580-feet high Shinku-La Pass between Lahaul valley in Himachal Pradesh and Zanskar valley in Union Territory of Ladakh will be ready by 2025 and
- Will provide all-weather connectivity between Himachal and Ladakh,
- Border Roads Organisation (BRO) chief Lt Gen Rajeev Chaudhary said here on Saturday.
- After attending the golden handshake ceremony for the opening of the Nimmu-Padum-Darcha road amidst fresh snowfall and in the middle of five to six feet high walls of snow,
- The director-general border roads (DGBR) said this new road, which has now opened for traffic, will be officially opened for all kinds of vehicles,
- As widening and blacktopping of the highway will be completed in three years along with completion of the Shinku-La tunnel.
About the tunnel
- “The Shinku-La tunnel will be 4.25km in length at an altitude of about 16,000ft. It will be the highest and longest tunnel at this altitude in the entire world,“ Chaudhary added that the work on the construction of the tunnel will start in July or August this year.
- The exercise to build the Nimmu-Darcha road had started 20 years back but the work faced many technical glitches.
- “This new road will prove a boon not only for the Army but will also bring a positive revolution in the Zanskar valley.”
- He said it used to take many days to travel from Zanskar to Himachal but now the travel time has been reduced to only a few hours.
- The travel time will be reduced more after widening and blacktopping of the highway.
Yojak project
- Lt Gen Chaudhary said the BRO’s Yojak Project, which was formed last year from the Atal tunnel, Has taken over the Nimmu-Padum-Darcha road from Project Deepak and Vijayak.
Atal tunnel
- The Atal tunnel, which provides an alternative to the 13,000-feet high Rohtang Pass, is the world’s longest highway tunnel above 10,000ft.
- The Nimmu-Padum-Darcha highway is safer than the existing Srinagar-Leh and Manali-Leh highways as it does not pass
- near the India-China or India-Pakistan borders.
- It has only one major pass, Shinku-La under which the new tunnel is being built and that will make it an all-weather road providing year-round road connectivity to Ladakh.
Q) BRO has previously built the highest motorable road at which among the following pass?
- Umling La
- Khardung La
- Chang La
- Zojila
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