Minister Gadkari inaugurates the breakthrough event of Chamba Tunnel under Chardham Pariyojana: Highlights with Details

Minister Gadkari inaugurates the breakthrough event of Chamba Tunnel under Chardham Pariyojana: Highlights with Details

Minister Gadkari inaugurates the breakthrough event of Chamba Tunnel under Chardham Pariyojana: Highlights with Details

Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways and MSMEs Nitin Gadkari today inaugurated the breakthrough event of Chamba Tunnel under Chardham Pariyojana through video conference mode.

Border Roads Organisation (BRO) achieved this major milestone by digging up a 440 m long Tunnel below the busy Chamba town on Rishikesh-Dharasu road Highway (NH 94). The breakthrough was completed amidst threat of COVID-19 and nationwide lockdown. The construction of tunnel was a challenging task in terms of weak soil strata, continuous water seepage, heavy built up area on top thereby chances of sinking of houses, land acquisition issues, restrictions during COVID lockdown etc.

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This Rishikesh-Dharasu-Gangotri road in Uttarakhand has a very significant role from socio economic and religious point of view. Minister Gadkari said, opening of this tunnel will ease out congestion though the Chamba town and reduce the distance by one kilometer and journey through the town will take only ten minutes as compared to thirty minutes earlier.

Director General of Border Roads Organisation, Lt Gen Harpal Singh said, BRO started the work on North Portal of this tunnel in Jan 2019 but work on South Portal could be started only after Oct 2019 due to stiff resistance from locals on account of safety concerns and compensation issues. To compensate for the loss in time, day and night working shifts along with use of modern technology facilitated the breakthrough. BRO is a key stake holder in prestigious Chardham project and breakthrough of this tunnel has been achieved by Team Shivalik. Latest Austrian technology has been used in its construction. The tunnel will be through for traffic by October this year, almost three months before its scheduled date of completion.

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A Tunnel of 440 mtr length to decongest busy Chamba town is being constructed out of these 10 projects. This is a Horse shoe type tunnel with 10 mtr carriage way width and 5.5 mtr vertical clearance. The sanctioned cost of this tunnel is 107.07 Crore. The awarded cost is Rs 86 Crore, including 43 Crore for Tunnel and 43 Crore for 4.2 Km approach roads to tunnel.