BRO completes excavation of Arunachal's Nechiphu tunnel

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 20

The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) today completed the final excavation work of Nechiphu tunnel on the strategically vital Tezpur-Tawang road. This comes just months after the BRO completed the excavation of Sela tunnel on the same route.

The two upcoming tunnels are part of plan to rapidly deploy troops and weapons along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China. A set of two tunnels under the Sela — a 13,700-feet-high Himalayan massif — is targeted for opening this summer.

The Nechiphu is also been speeded up to be completed before the winter sets in. The tunnels are coming up on the 329-km Tezpur-Tenga-BomdiLa-Tawang route that leads to the LAC in sensitive sector in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh.

At present, it takes about 12-14 hours by car to complete the long-winding route and it often gets blocked due to heavy snow for three to four months during winter. Military trucks with heavy load could take up to two days cover the route.

Nechiphu tunnel is at an altitude of 5,700 feet and will bypass extreme foggy conditions prevailing around Nechiphu Pass which caused hindrance to general traffic and military convoys for decades. At Sela, a Rs 700 crore project will provide year-round connectivity and shorten the route by 90 minutes. The BRO is making a new alignment that covers a total distance of 12.04 km, which consists of two tunnels of 1,790 m and 475 m. Both tunnels will accommodate two-way traffic and will be equipped with modern lighting and safety facilities.

They have ducts for power cables, optical fibre cables and utility lines. Construction is being done in accordance with the new Austrian tunneling method. The BRO had made high-altitude and mountainous tunnels like the Atal Tunnel, Rohtang in Himachal Pradesh and the Chamba Tunnel in Uttarakhand.

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