Tunnel La

Having overcome several Himalayan challenges, the 9.2-km-long Rohtang tunnel—the world’s longest for traffic—will get commissioned by the end of September. At 10,171 feet above sea level, the tunnel named after former PM Atal Bihari Vaj­payee lays down an alternative route to the strategically important Leh-Ladakh region, and will provide around-the-year connectivity to the remote Lahaul-Spiti district and Pangi valley, Chamba district, of Himachal Pradesh. The tunnel is beneath Rohtang La–a mountain pass at 13,059 feet leading to Lahaul-Spiti. The pass remaines snowed under and closed for almost six months every year, snapping all communications to the picturesque valleys. The two-lane tunnel will also reduce the travelling distance between Manali and Keylong, the district headquarters of Lahaul-Spiti.

“For at least six months following closure of Rohtang La in November, the ent­ire population of Lahaul-Spiti used to live in isolation,” says the project chief engineer, Brigadier K.P. Purushothaman. “The only communication was through helicopter sorties operated for medical emergencies and supplies. Sometimes even helicopters could not fly for days due to the hostile winter. Many people of Lahaul-Spiti used to lock their homes and come to Manali before every winter, and return only after the Rohtang pass is ­reopened in May. Now they will have an all-weather road.” The brigadier adds that the tunnel’s south portal will showcase the finest of Kullu art and architecture, while the north portal will be done up with ethnic art by Lahaul natives, using local materials.

Conceived in 1983 by PM Indira Gandhi, the tunnel’s construction was ­finally approved in June 2000 by PM Vajpayee, who laid the foundation stone for the access road to the south portal on May 26, 2002, in Manali. “Vajpayee alw­ays treated Himachal Pradesh as his second home and used to stay at Prini, a small village near Manali,” says Himachal chief minister Jai Ram Thakur, who met Border Roads Organisation (BRO) officials in Manali on August 29 to finalise arrangements for the tunnel’s inauguration by PM Narendra Modi, tentatively scheduled for September 29.

The horseshoe-shaped tunnel is considered an eng­ineering marvel that will not only open up the high-altitude valley of Lahaul-Spiti to tourists, but also facilitate the movement of off-seasonal vegetables, cash crops and flowers from Lahaul to markets in Delhi and the plains. It is also strategically important for the Indian Army dep­loyed along the Line of Actual Control, the de facto  Chinese border, where military skirmishes often break out.

The tunnel has advanced features. It has underground emergency escape tunnels after every 500 metres, systems for auto-lighting, intelligent traffic control, accident detection and air pollution control, semi-transverse ventilation with fans to circulate air, fire-safety gadgets, CCTV cameras every 250 met­res and telephone facility after 150 met­res. The high altitude necessitated the special ventilation system and state-of-the-art electronic mec­hanical fittings. The tunnel has a 10-metre-wide road with a footpath of one metre on either side. Its capacity is 3,000 cars and 1,500 trucks a day and the BRO proposes a 60 kmph speed limit.

The initial deadline for the project was 2015, which was later extended to 2017 and then 2018. Then defence minister Manohar Parrikar was questioned in Parliament over the delays. “The drilling was fraught with unexpected geographical challenges, including water ing­ress on the south portal,” says Brig. Purush­othaman. The BRO engineers were initially baffled on finding the glacier-induced Seri nullah flowing across the tunnel. With its water flow of up to 140 litres per second, it seemed to put the ­entire project in jeopardy. A committee, which included experts from the Department of Science and Technology, the National Institute of Rock Mechanics, Bangalore, the Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research, Nagpur, and the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun, was set up to suggest solutions. “It took three years for the Seri nullah to be finally tackled and work was speeded up thereafter. Now the tunnel is absolutely safe from this problem,” says Brig. Purushothaman. Inclement weather and avalanches, however, continued to pose hurdles.

Himachal minister for tribal affairs and IT, Ramlal Markanda, who is the MLA for Lahaul-Spiti, sees the impending commissioning of the tunnel as a turning point in the history of the snow-locked valley. “The people of Lahaul-Spiti and Killar in Pangi valley are eagerly awaiting the red-letter day when the Prime Minister will dedicate the project to the nation. The economy of the area will witness a sea change. The tourism sector will get a huge boost and farmers will have all-year connectivity with markets,” he says, adding locals will now get assured ­access to medical care at all times.

The people of Lahaul-Spiti are apprehensive about the potential impact of the unrestricted flow of tourists and construction of tourism infrastructure on the local ecology and culture. “Economic revolution in Lahaul-Spiti has been a dem­and of its local community for more than a century, but what really worries us now is possible overcrowding and

cultural invasion,” says Chander Mohan Parsheera, a professor of tourism at Himachal Pradesh University, a Lahaul-Spiti native who has supervised a ­research project–titled, Lahaul After Rohtang Tunnel. “We are a tribal society with distinctive traditions, and there is a constitutional guarantee available to ­tribals. What will happen to Keylong if 5,000 tourist vehicles are ­allowed to enter Lahaul through the Rohtang tunnel every day? Can you ima­gine its multiple impacts?”

Pointing out that Lahaul valley’s population is barely 15,000, Parsheera adds that there is an urgent need for policy intervention to curb irresponsible tourist movement. The fate of the Rohtang pass is an example of the mess created by unregulated tourism that was stopped by the National Green Tribal in 2015-16. Nobody in Lahaul-Spiti wants this to happen to the high-altitude tribal valley. “Tourists who see the Rohtang tunnel will not go back before coming to Keylong. We are suggesting a Bhutan-type model of regulated entry of tourists and demanding that Lahaul-Spiti be declared a culturally protected zone,” says Parsheera.

DGP Sanjay Kundu has set up a board of officers to come up with a plan for the tunnel’s security, besides taking care of surveillance, manpower dep­loyment, preventive policing  and traffic control. He suggested a security protocol on the lines of the Jawahar tunnel in Jammu and Kashmir, apart from replicating the London Tube’s policy model.

While Rohtang tunnel will provide all-weather connectivity to Lahaul-Spiti and also Leh-Ladakh, but to keep the road open during the peak winter months, at least two more tunnels will be required to match the infrastructure needs of the border areas with China. BRO officials are confident that Modi will soon give a go-ahead for construction of a 13.2-km tunnel beneath the 16,040-feet Baralacha La in the Zanskar range, considered the most treacherous drive to Leh from Manali. The pass remains closed to traffic during winter, while the melting snow and glaciers are a traveller’s horror story in summer. A detailed project report has been submitted to the defence ministry by the BRO for the proposed tunnel. Another tunnel has been proposed beneath the Shinku La–16,703 feet–connecting Lahaul valley to Zanskar, for which the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corpora­tion is doing  surveys.

By Ashwani Sharma in Shimla