New Delhi, (Samajweekly) Jammu and Kashmir has witnessed unprecedented progress in road and bridge construction in the last five to six years and the proposed Chattergala tunnel, to be build at a cost of Rs 3,000 crore, is going to be a revolutionary game changer, Border Road Organisation (BRO) Director General Lieutenant General Rajeev Chaudhry told Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Monday.
Lieutenant General Choudhary met Singh in Delhi and updated him about works being carried out by BRO across the border. He also stated that about a dozen bridges have come up in the single Lok Sabha constituency of Udhampur-Kathua-Doda itself, the notable among which are Atal Setu at Basohli and Devika Bridge at Udhampur.
Talking about the proposed Chattergala tunnel in Jammu and Kashmir that will connect district Kathua with district Doda en-route the new Highway via Basohli-Bani through Chattergalla to touch Bhaderwah and Doda, the Lieutenant General said it will be a historic project providing all-weather alternate road connectivity between the two distant regions and reducing the travel time from Doda to Lakhanpur on the Punjab border to just around four hours.
It was going to be a 6.8 kilometer long tunnel for which the feasibility survey has already been conducted by BRO.
The tunnel is likely to take about 4 years for completion after the execution work starts and its construction cost is around Rs. 3,000 crore. It is going to be a revolutionary game changer. This will not only generate revenue but also job generation.
Moreover, the all-weather road connectivity will bring ease of business, shorten the travel time and also provide a unique opportunity for places like Bani and Bhaderwah to emerge as tourist destinations of national repute.
Singh said, the demand for the tunnel at Chattergalla had been pending for several years, but was somehow not taken up by earlier governments because of their different priorities.
The other important BRO projects that came up during the review meeting included construction of roads and bridges in the hilly and difficult terrain of Jammu and Kashmir.
About the Northeast, Singh received an update about BRO projects in different states, particularly about four road projects funded by the North Eastern Council (NEC) under the aegis of the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) in Mizoram and two BRO projects in Manipur.
