Asia’s longest road tunnel— Chenani-Nashri tunnel, which would connect Udhampur district with Ramban district on Jammu-Srinagar Highway awaits nod from National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) for its opening.
Sources involved in construction of 9 kilometer long 2-lane tunnel, told Kashmir Post that the project is almost complete but the NHAI so far has not given its Commercial Operations Date (COD), mandatory for start testing and commissioning.
“All civil works on the tunnel including extension of cemented roads on both North (Nashri) and South (Chenani) end have been completed,” sources said, adding that 29 cross passages were developed at every 300 meter interval for safety of commuters.
“The tunnel will be the first in India equipped with world class “Integrated Tunnel Control System” (ITCS) through which Ventilation, Fire control, Signals, Communication, electrical systems tolling will be automatically actuated,” sources said.
“Work on laying electric wires, fiber optical cable for telecommunication network, other vital cabling and installation of exhaust fans and lights have also been done,” they added.
Sources said that Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS), company roped in for infrastructure development of the project after Leighton India left the project, has requested NHAI for initiating testing process and approving Commercial Operations Date (COD) at the earliest.
“We have already written NHAI for COD, after which highways authorities will start testing process, which involves careful scrutiny of each and every corner of the tunnel, inspection of equipment and safety gadgets, and mock exercise for fire or disaster,” said J S Rathor, IL&FA’s Project Director of Chenani-Nashri tunnel.
“After COD, the highway authorities will take up the project from us and initiate testing process to check the suffocation level inside the tunnel by passing some vehicles, capacity of the installed machinery to exhaust the unwanted carbon-dioxide and to pump-in fresh oxygen, and response of disaster teams in view of any untoward incident before opening it for public,” he said.
“The tunnel has to pass all quality check before going for public use which will take 20 days to one month”, the project director added.
Pertinently, the scheduled date of completion of the Rs 2519 crore tunnel project was May 2016 and the executing agency was hopeful to finish its job by December 2015, around five months ahead of the deadline. However, due to a dispute between construction workers and executing agency the work was delayed. Later it was supposed to be thrown open in June but the deadline was further extended till July 16.
Authorities again extended the deadline after fresh dispute between construction workers and executing agency. However, so far no date has been finalized for the commissioning of the project.
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 district. It will reduce the existing road distance between the two points from 41 kilometers to 10.89 kilometers, by-passing Kud-Patnitop-Batote circuit.
Meanwhile, work on four-laning of Udhampur-Chenani and Nashri-Ramban stretches of the highway, which was started in last week of December 2015, is going on.
