Banihal-Qazigund tunnel likely to open next year

Banihal, May 20

The excavation work inside the 8.5-km-long Banihal-Qazigund tunnel along the Jammu-Srinagar national highway completed on Sunday, with its twin tubes likely to be made operational next year, a senior National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) official said.

“The double-tube excavation work inside the Banihal-Qazigund four-lane tunnel was completed after seven years… The breakthrough was made on Sunday,” said NHAI project director Ghulam Qadir.

The existing Jawahar tunnel, under the Banihal pass, is at an elevation of 2,194 metre (7,198 feet), making it prone to avalanches, which have lead to the closure and bottlenecks on the 265-km all-weather highway linking Kashmir to the rest of the country.

The new Banihal-Qazigund tunnel’s elevation is 1,790 metre (5,870 feet), 400 metre below the Jawahar tunnel. This makes it less prone to avalanches, the NHAI official said.

The work on the Rs 2,100-crore project started in June 2011 and on completion, the tunnel will reduce the distance between Banihal and Qazigund by 16 km.

“The project is likely to be completed by next year,” Qadir said. The tunnel has two parallel tubes, one for each direction. Each tube will be 7-metre (23 feet) wide with two lanes. One of the tubes was completed in February this year. The tubes are interconnected by passages at every 500 metre for maintenance and emergency evacuation. The tunnel will have forced ventilation for extracting smoke and stale air and infusing fresh air. It will have state-of-the-art monitoring and control systems for security.

It is expected that commuters using the tunnel will have to pay a toll. — PTI