After a long wait, the Pir Panjal tunnel, the country’s most difficult and strategically important tunnel in Banihal near Jammu is ready and was inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday. It is 11 km long and is already being described as an engineering marvel. It is being said to be Asia’s second biggest and India’s longest tunnel.
The tunnel between the Qazigund town in Kashmir and Banihal in Jammu region took the Hindustan Construction Company more than six years to build and the results are outstanding. It is a state of the art tunnel and it has many features. The tunnel is illuminated across the 11 km length so that once the train traverses this, it will have no difficulty.
Other features include a drainage system beneath, which disallows the seepage of water into the tunnel. There are sign boards and for the first time there’s mobile connectivity inside the tunnel.
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