Road widening work creates havoc in Ramban
Gopal Sharma
JAMMU, May 9: Over 5000 vehicles remained stranded on Jammu-Srinagar National Highway as the road in Ramban belt has been blocked at two places due to massive landslides after road widening work by the executing agency.
Official sources said there was no rain or bad weather in the area for the last few days. The HCC company has engaged several machines between Monkey Morh and Digdol, about 10 kms ahead of Ramban towards Kashmir. In this exercise, massive landslides and falling of bounders, occurred and the highway was blocked at around 4.30 pm on Wednesday.
With this, over 2000 vehicles got stranded between Digdol and Ramban. The HCC Company and NHAI authorities launched road clearance operation. It managed to clear one area but the continuous landslides, shooting stones and boulders, created havoc on this busy highway throughout the day today and hampered the clearance work. The highway remained closed even on Thursday and there was little hope of its clearance by tomorrow morning, the sources said.
“For the last two weeks now, the problem has aggravated on this Highway and the road users between Kashmir and Jammu have been suffering badly. It takes now about 15 to 20 hours and even more to cover distances between Srinagar and Jammu due to frequent falling of boulders and shooting stones,” the sources said.
The public is suffering badly due to mess being created on the highway by the executing agencies while the NHIA authorities and the State Administration have failed to take serious note of it.
Reports from Ramban said that at present, over 500 light motor vehicles and nearly 1500 trucks/ tankers have been stranded between Chanderkote , Ramban and Digdol, while more than 2000 heavy vehicles were stranded since Wednesday evening at Udhampur Bypass, Dhar Road and Nagrota-Jagti area of Jammu. Over 1000 trucks were said to have been stranded on other side of the Jawahar Tunnel and Banihal area.
IGP Traffic J&K, Alok Kumar when contacted said that Highway between Monkey Morh and Digdol has become very vulnerable. For the last 5 days it has started giving much trouble. He said since last evening, the land slides and falling of boulders continued between Monkey Morh and Digdol. Despite efforts of the HCC machines, the highway could not be cleared.
Kumar further said after the highway is cleared by the agency, scores of vehicles are allowed to cross and then again boulders fall on the road. This process is going on for the last several days and the highway is nearly closed for the last five days. Trucks loaded with essentials for Kashmir have been stranded at many places.
Meanwhile, in view of closure of Jammu-Srinagar highway via Ramban, the Traffic police authorities allowed movement of LMV traffic from Shopian side to Rajouri on Mughal Road. Since there was up movement of vehicles from Jammu side to Kashmir today, a traffic mess was created on Mughal Road and many vehicles remained stranded for more than four to five hours on this road. The passengers had to suffer for long due to traffic jams. The Traffic police authorities however, later cleared the traffic jams.
A senior Traffic Police officer has said that people must undertake journey on Mughal Road after following traffic advisory being issued every day through media and Police/ Traffic Control Rooms.
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