Nishikant Khajuria
JAMMU, Sept 8: The much awaited completion of India’s longest road tunnel, connecting Chenani in Udhampur district and Nashri in Ramban district, is all set to jump the fresh deadline by around two months as the ongoing work in final phase is taking time.
“Because of the technicalities involved in execution of work, particularly concrete pavement and restricted movement inside the tunnel, the final phase is taking a little bit extra time and it will take more than two months for completion of the job,” official sources informed the Excelsior.
Further, cutting of earth on northern side for link road is still going on and it will take around 20 more days for starting construction of road linking the tunnel from Nashri end to the National Highway, sources added.
It may be recalled that September 25 was earlier set as deadline for completion of the project after detailed review of the ongoing as well as pending works of the tunnel, during a high level meeting of the officers of National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and the Concessionaire, IF&SL, in the month of July.
Even as around 95 percent civil work on the project has been completed while the installation of equipments and gadgets like sound diffusers, ventilators, fans, fire fighters, electrical panels and transformers etc, inside the tunnel, is under progress, it will take approximately two more months for completion of the project, sources said.
While elaborating, sources explained that around 50 percent work of electrification and installation of gadgets is pending and once this job is finished, testing of the installed equipments will take approximately 30 to 40 days. Further, sources added, only two kilometers of the pavement road in main tunnel from Chenani end has been completed and the remaining work is ought to take around a month.
When contacted, Project Director, NHAI, Atarade, confirmed that it will take approximately two months for completion of the job because of the technicalities involved in execution of work and restrictions on movement. “From the pace of ongoing work, we can estimate that the tunnel may be thrown open for vehicular traffic by mid of forthcoming November,” he added.
Pertinent to mention that fresh deadline is around six months later than the time limit set initially for completion of the project, which was earlier scheduled to be finished by May 21, 2016 and then extended by 50 days to July 10, 2016.
The executing agency was earlier hopeful of completing this Rs 2519 crores project by December 2015, around five months ahead of the deadline, because of more than satisfactory pace of work. However, a controversy over payments and claims between Concessionaire IL&FS and main contractor Leighton led to slowing down of the work and then complete abandoning of job by the latter in November 2014 after which the Main Developer, National Highway Authority of India, engaged multiple agencies for completion of the project with new deadline of July 2016.
Once completed, the Chenani-Nashri tunnel will act as an all-weather alternative to the existing NH-1A section connecting Chenani in Udhampur with Nashri in Ramban districts. It will reduce the existing road distance between the two points from 41 kms to 10.89 kms.
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