Firdous Iqbal
Snowing heavily at Jawahar Tunnel area from both sides. All kinds of movement has been halted at NH-44. Light motor vehicles were allowed from newly constructed Banihal Qazigund Road Tunnel, that was scheduled to be thrown open for general public(LMV), on 7th January 2021, as per some unofficial sources.
Banihal Qazigund Road Tunnel is an 8.5 km road tunnel at elevation of 1,790 m in the Pir Panjal range in the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir connecting Banihal and Qazigund. It is a double tube tunnel consisting of two parallel tunnels – one for each direction of travel. Each tunnel is 7 m wide and has two lanes of road. The two tunnels are interconnected by a passage every 500 m for maintenance and emergency evacuation. The tunnel will have forced ventilation for extracting smoke and stale air and infusing fresh air. It will have state of the art monitoring and control systems for security. It is expected that vehicles will have to pay a toll to use the tunnel.
