OUR CORRESPONDENT
ITANAGAR: The 1,050-metre escape tube of one of the two tunnels of Sela Tunnel in Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh was broken open on July 22 last, much ahead of the schedule, a senior official of Border Roads Organization (BRO) informed here on Friday.
Works on two planned tunnels at Sela Pass, one 980 meters long and other 1,555 meters, have been progressing at fast space considering the sensitivity of the project, BRO's Project Vartak Chief Engineer Brig Harish Kumar informed.
He added that the construction of the tunnel commenced on April 1, 2019, with the first blasting carried out on October 31, the same year, to speed up the pace of excavation.
"The Sela Pass located at an altitude of 13,800 ft remains traffic unworthy round the year due to fog and heavy snowfall. As the strategic Balipur-Chardur-Tawang road passes through Sela Pass and is used by the armed forces for movement to the Indo-China border, the Defence Ministry had decided to develop Sela Tunnel, the longest in the world, from the national security angle," Kumar said.
The tunnel is being excavated below Sela Pass on National Highway 13, part of Trans-Arunachal Highway, to offer a fair-weather passage round the year and to reduce travel time from Tezpur in Assam to Tawang, he reasoned.
The tunnel would be the longest in the world and would help the speedy response of the soldiers in case of natural calamities besides their faster movement for deployment along the LAC, the Defence Ministry said earlier adding, it would facilitate speedy socio-economic development of entire North Eastern region, Arunachal Pradesh in particular.
It may be recalled that Union Home Minister Amit Shah while elaborating the country's border policy recently, had said that six tunnels have been successfully built on the country's borders in the last six years.
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