SRINAGAR : The national highway, connecting the Kashmir valley with the rest of the country remained closed for the fourth day today due to landslides and shooting stones, triggered by heavy rain.
Meanwhile, hundreds of vehicles, including those carrying passengers, and trucks including those carrying essentials for the Valley, are still stranded at different places on the highway.
The National Highway, linking the Ladakh region with the Valley, historic Mughal road and Bandipora-Gurez and Synthan-Kishtwar roads also remained closed since December last year due to accumulation of snow.
Dozens of villages, including those near the Line of Control (LoC) also remained cut off from their respective district and tehsil headquarters in north Kashmir due to fresh snowfall.
However, traffic on Srinagar-Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) road was restored yesterday after remaining closed for a day due to landslides, triggered by rain.
A traffic police official said this morning that the Srinagar-Jammu highway remained closed for the fourth day today due to shooting stones and landslides at several places, particularly at Penthal and Sher Bibi. He said the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), responsible for the maintainance of the highway are already on the job to put through the traffic.
However, at some places portion of road had been badly damaged due to landslides, triggered by heavy rain. However, he said if the road is put through again only stranded vehicles would be allowed to move towards their respective destinations.
No fresh vehicle from Jammu or Srinagar will be allowed before all stranded vehicles are cleared, he said. He said since there is a forecast for more rain during the next 24 hours, decision to allow fresh traffic will be taken only after getting green signal from BRO and traffic police officials posted at different places on the highway.
He said traffic was suspended for the safety and security of the passengers and will be restored only when the road condition is stable. However, all those who had planned to undertake the travel on the highway must contact Police Control Room (PCR) or Traffic Control Rooms (RCRs) at Jammu or Srinagar before starting the journey.
Meanwhile, hundreds of light vehicles, including those carrying passengers, which left Jammu and Srinagar before the road was closed, are stranded on the highway at different places.
Truckers alleged that they were not being allowed to move towards Kashmir when passenger vehicles were allowed. We are stranded for the past five days, they said adding although we have enough stock of essentials with us, but there is no water.
Hundreds of trucks loaded with essentials for the Valley could be seen parked on one side of the highway. Similarly, large number of empty trucks and oil tankers could be seen stranded at Anantnag, Qazigund and Jawahar tunnel.
A traffic official said rainfall during the past more than a week has resulted in shrinking of existing road formation at some places due to which two heavy vehicles cannot pass simultaneously at these locations.
However, to avoid any accident or traffic jam, authorities had imposed restriction on traffic movement on the highway. Officials said when the traffic will be resumed, passenger and private vehicles will be allowed to ply from both sides while heavy vehicles will ply from one side only with some restrictions.
However, no heavy vehicle will be allowed from opposite direction till further orders. He said the restrictions would continue till the BRO complete the repair work and the stretches could be made worthy for two-way traffic.
The historic Mughal raod, connecting Shopian in south Kashmir with Rajouri and Poonch in Jammu region remained closed since December last year due to accumulation of snow.
However, Iearly reopening of the road, which is seen as alternative to Srinagar-Jammu National Highway, suffered a setback following three to four feet of fresh snowfall.
Though the snow clearance operation had been started from both sides of the Pir-ki-Gali early this month, fresh heavy snowfall has delayed reopening of the road. Shopian also received moderate snowfall while the upper reaches had heavy to very heavy snowfall during the past 72 hours. The Synthan-Kishtwar road also remained closed for all sorts of traffic since December last year due to snow.
The Ladakh region remained cut off from the rest of the state since December last year due to accumulation of several feet of snow. However, due to less snowfall this winter, the road was scheduled to reopen a month early this year. But fresh snowfall during the past two days has hampered snow clearance operation.
There was fresh snowfall at several places, including Zojila, Sonmarg and Meenmarg on the national highway, official sources said adding the snow clearance operation by BRO was going on from both sides to put through the highway.Though the snow clearance operation on Zojila pass was also completed last week, but fresh snowfall could cause some delay in reopening of the highway.
This time the BRO had announced that the highway would be put through for traffic about a month earlier because of less snowfall this time The Government of India (GoI) has already approved construction of a tunnel at Zojila to make it all weather road.
The road linking the border town of Gurez and dozens of other villages near the Line of Control (LoC) with district headquarter Bandipora remained closed since December last year. There was also fresh snowfall on all upper reaches in the north Kashmir.
A number of other roads, linking Kerna, Karnah, Tangdhar and Machil also were closed due to heavy snowfall. (AGENCIES)
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