Katra-Banihal Rail Project, the toughest in the India’s engineering history, involving construction of 27 bridges-including the tallest rail bridge in the world, and 37 tunnels-including one-more than 12 km tunnel-the longest in Asia; offering all-weather connectivity, will now hopefully become functional by 2021. This rail link will enable trains to operate between New Delhi and Srinagar in 14 hours. It will make passenger travel more convenient, give a push to tourism in the valley, and will also make movement of freight to and from the valley a lot easier and cheaper, leading to the creation of more jobs in the strife-torn state. This project with cost of over Rs. 10,000 crore is a big development push and cornerstone of Modi government’s outreach programme in Jammu & Kashmir.
Railway link to connect Kashmir Valley with rest of the country was initiated in 1983 and gained momentum during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, which declared it as a national project. So far, Jammu has been linked to Katra, a stretch of 78-km, via Udhampur while Baramulla in North Kashmir has been linked with 112-km stretch in South with Banihal, where the famous Jawahar tunnel is located.
The work on the prestigious Katra-Banihal 148-km link has been in progress where about 85 per cent of the track is made of tunnels covering 111 km and several tunnels are being made in the Peer Panjal range and some experts had earlier raised doubts on safety of this Katra-Banihal rail link.
This track will also have the world’s longest and highest railway bridge that will be 359 metres high and will have a span of 467 metres, besides 26 other bridges covering almost 10 km.
About two-thirds of the 326 km Jammu-Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla rail link is ready. The portion that needs to be completed is a 111 km stretch between Katra famous of Vaishno Devi Shrine near Jammu and Banihal on the slopes of Kashmir valley. Construction on various stretches on the route is already on and as the terrain in the Himalayas, one of the youngest mountain ranges in the world is tough as the soil changes every 15 km, several international consultants have been engaged.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on April 2, 2017 inaugurated 9-km long country’s longest Chenani-Nashri Road Tunnel, built at the cost of Rs. 2,500 crore that links Kashmir Valley with Jammu by an all-weather route and reduces the distance by 30 km.
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