SRINAGAR : One-way traffic was today restored on the national highway, connecting the Kashmir valley with the rest of the country after remaining suspended for four days due to landslides and shooting stones, triggered by heavy rains.
However, the national highway, linking the Ladakh region with Kashmir valley, historic Mughal road and Bandipora-Gurez and Synthan-Kishtwar roads 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 districts and tehsil headquarters in north Kashmir due to fresh snowfall.
”We allowed one-way traffic on the 300-km-long Srinagar-Jammu national highway this morning, a traffic police official told UNI here. He said today vehicles from Jammu to Srinagar were allowed to ply on the highway.
However, no vehicle will be allowed from Kashmir to Jammu as 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.
Hundreds of vehicles, mostly carrying passengers, left Jammu for Kashmir this morning, he said adding besides trucks, loaded with essentials, stranded at different places on the highway for the past four days will also be allowed to move towards the summer capital.
However, no vehicle will be allowed from Kashmir to Jammu, he said adding decision to allow traffic tomorrow will be taken keeping in view the road’s condition.
Traffic on the highway was suspended on March 17 due to shooting stones and landslides at several places, particularly at Penthal, Ramban, Ramsu and Sher Bibi.
However, the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), responsible for the maintainance of the highway put into service sophisticated machines and men to restore traffic. However, continuous rain, triggering more landslides and a portion of road was washed away, traffic could not be restored with the result hundreds of vehicles got stranded on both sides.
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.
Fresh snowfall recently on the road, which is seen as alternative to Srinagar-Jammu national highway, has delayed early reopening of the historic road.
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.
Governor N N Vohra has written to Union Surface Minister Nitin Gadkari to declare the Mughal road as national highway to make it all weather road. 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 union government 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 Keran, Karnah, Tangdhar and Machil also were closed due to heavy snowfall. (AGENCIES)
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