With the Defence Ministry speeding up the exercise to connect Ladakh with a new shorter, better and safer highway, the Darcha-Shinku la-Zanskar valley road, which will become the main road to connect Ladakh with mainland, reopened one month ahead of schedule on Thursday. This road was lying closed following snowfall since October.
After completing winter snow clearance operations on Manali-Sarchu-Leh and Srinagar-Zojila-Leh highways, the third road connecting Ladakh with the mainland via 16,600ft high Shinku-la also reopened on Thursday. Ministry of Defence (MoD) is spending thousands of crores on this road to make it the main road to reach Ladakh. As snow clearance on this road has completed, Border Roads Organisation (BRO) will engage in road alignment, widening, and blacktopping of the road between Darcha in Himachal and Padum in Zanskar valley of Ladakh.
“Snow has been cleared from Shinku-la. We would have cleared snow much earlier but snowfall remained hampering our works in April and May. We shall now concentrate on widening and blacktopping of the highway along with building retaining and breast walls and culverts. Some bridges are also proposed to be built on the road. The work on traffic tunnel below Shinku-la is also expected to start this year,” a BRO official said.
In strategic point of view, the 297-km-long Darcha-Shinku la-Padum-Nimmu road will have many advantages over other two highways which have many mountain passes and take a much longer travel time. This road passes away from both Chinese and Pakistan borders and will allow safe movement to the military convoys. The highway will become the main road for military supply in near future and will be India’s reply to China which is developing its border infrastructure. Darcha, 100km from Manali on Manali-Sarchu-Leh highway, will connect the Leh-Kargil highway at Nimmu, 35km from Leh.
Over 50km of the Darcha-Nimmu highway has been double-laned and blacktopped. Many bridges are being built and shortest possible formation cutting is being done. Road is being realigned at some places to make travel comfortable and to reduce travel time. The Darcha-Padum section was opened for off-road vehicles on September 2019 but the Padum-Nimmu section may take upto two more years to connect. At present, Leh and Kargil are connected with Padum via Pensi-la pass road or via Lingshed-Wanla road.
“We get a limited time period to work on this road as both concrete works and blacktopping is not possible in winter season when temperature plunges below minus 20 degrees C. Now that we have achieved connectivity, all the works will pick up the pace,” the official added.
Meanwhile, vehicular movement resumed on Manali-Spiti highway on Thursday. BRO had on Tuesday cleared snow from the road which was blocked since October last year. Similar to Manali-Leh and Darcha-Padum roads, Manali-Spiti road has also opened ahead of schedule this year. After opening all major mountain passes, Rohtang pass is still awaiting its opening.
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