JK News Today
Jammu, April 2: There seems to be some jinx with Jammu-Srinagar national highway as all efforts of easing out the travel are going in vain and things are going from bad to worst.
Things are coming back to square one whenever rain lashes the area and traffic comes to the grinding halt.
The 37-km-long Ramban to Banihal stretch of the national highway 44 is considered as the most dangerous zone due to vulnerability of landslides, shooting stones and sinking of the land. The widening of the highway, as part of the north-south corridor of four-lane project, has become the toughest job to do for the construction agency and national highway authority of India (NHAI).
Several lives of construction workers have been lost during this process and earth moving machinery has been damaged on regular intervals. People also had to suffer to blockade of road which halts the traffic for days together.
As part of the project, NHAI had kept many tunnels to avoid passage through slide and tough zones but things are not moving smoothly.
Recently, one of the most dangerous zones on this national highway was bypassed by opening a tunnel at Panthal tunnel, which was considered as a big achievement for construction agency. The tunnel was thrown open for traffic and the area which used to receive shooting stones every now and then was bypassed but since yesterday when the rain lashed Jammu and Kashmir, the south portal of the tunnel witnessed heavy shooting stones thus stopping the traffic movement.
“Earlier, this side was hardly receiving any stone but today big boulders started falling at the south portal of the tunnel and traffic had to stop. Now, everybody was waiting the stones to stop falling so that traffic movement could be restored,” said an official of the district administration Ramban.
Since the start of the four-lane project, not much has been done to treat the root cause of landslides and shooting stones and focus has only be kept on construction side.
A geological expert told JK News Today that authorities should also treat the danger zones so that things become smooth. “If we wait for things to stop naturally, the area needs to rest for almost 20 years to get its ecology back,” the expert said.
