Prime Minister Modi To Inaugurate India’s Longest Tunnel Built On Jammu-Srinagar Highway 

The longest tunnel in India, 9.28 km in length, built on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway, will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 2 April, Hindustan Times has reported.

The tunnel, constructed at a height of 1,200 metres, will reduce the travel distance between Jammu and Srinagar by around 30 km.

Construction of this mega-structure, called Chenani-Nashri tunnel, began in 2011. Over Rs 3,720 crore was spent on the project which was Rs 1,200 crore more than the initial estimated cost. While the main tunnel is 30 metres wide, the parallel escape tunnel is 6 metre in width and is connected to the main tunnel through passages 300 metres apart.

The tunnel is equipped with all modern facilities including video surveillance, power supply, SOS call box, fire fighting and incident detection and an FM signal repeater.

The tunnel will allow people of the valley and the Jammu city to bypass the avalanches and landslides prone stretches between Patnitop, Kud, and Batote towns. This tunnel is a part of a project to connect the two major cities of the state with a 286-km-long four-lane highway.