Quiet opening to Rohtang tunnel amid election din
LINKED ‘Lahaul Da Milan’ celebrates freedom from remoteness as Himachal’s tribal district will be open to traffic for first time in winter; tunnel to cut short ManaliLeh distance by 46km
SHIMLA:With the poll code in place in Himachal Pradesh, the 8.8-km long Rohtang tunnel got a quiet opening on Friday.
Far from the din, villagers of Lahaul and Spiti celebrated the breakthrough in a religious way by gathering at Sissu, the north portal of the tunnel. The district, which remains cut off for six months a year, will be open to traffic for the first time this winter.
Rejoicing what they described a freedom from the remoteness, the locals celebrated Lahaul Utsav as the head abbot lit a small lamp at the Key monastery. Tulku Lochen Lama, the head abbot of Key monastery, told Hindustan Times over the phone, “It is a dream come true for us. There is no end to people’s happiness today.”
“The country got freedom 70 years ago, but the people of Lahaul and Spiti have got freedom in true sense only today. The tunnel is not only strategic from the defence point of view, it will also transform the economy and help end the hardships of people in the region,” said Rigzin Hayreppa, a local.
In the wake of the election code of conduct, locals kept the celebrations non-political even as local leaders, owing allegiance to Congress and BJP, attempted to take credit for the tunnel.
“We allowed the gathering at the helipad as it was a non-political function,” said Dewa Singh Negi, deputy commissioner of Lahaul and Spiti. To avoid controversy, officials of the border road organisation, the key agency undertaking the construction of the tunnel, did not participate in the function.
“The digging work of the 8.8-kilometre all-weather Tunnel has been completed but civil works is going on and will be completed by 2019,” said a BRO official on the condition of anonymity.
The tunnel will bring down the distance between Manali and Leh by 46 kilometres. Currently, the distance between the two towns is 474 kilometres, which takes six to eight hours to cover. The tunnel will reduce the travel time by two-and-a-half hours.
The tunnel will also help accelerate troop mobility to the strategic frontiers in Jammu and Kashmir, besides providing a road link to Lahaul and Spiti in winter.
At present, people in the tribal district are dependent on the government-run helicopter services in winter.
The horse-shoe shaped road tunnel will be functional for emergency vehicles through this winter but will get fully operational by August 15, 2019. The project, started in 2010, and was to be completed in February 2015, but water ingress from Seri Nullah, ban on rock mining, delay in allotment of land needed for quarrying, and loose rock strata in the middle led to a slowdown.
The estimated cost of the project in 2010 was ₹1,700 crore. It was revised to ₹2,000 crore in 2015 and now the projected cost by 2019 is ₹4,000 crore.
Conceived in 1998, the project was announced by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on June 3, 2000. The work was entrusted to BRO on May 6, 2002. United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi laid the foundation stone of the project on June 28, 2010.
The tunnel is not only strategic from the defence point of view, it will also transform the economy and help end the hardships of people in the region. RIGZIN HAYREPPA, a local