Atal Tunnel done, now PM Modi pushes Border Roads chief for all-weather axis to Ladakh

Prime Minister Narendra Modi apparently had a detailed discussion with the BRO chief at the Atal Tunnel site and told him that road infrastructure on the border areas must be speeded up so that Indian troops can patrol up to the last point.

Updated on: Oct 4, 2020, 14:43:27 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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After inaugurating the 9.2-km Atal Tunnel on Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) chief Lieutenant General Harpal Singh to start preparing for the underground tunnel at Shinku-La so that an all-weather road is completed to Ladakh via Darcha-Padam-Nimu route in next three years.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seen with defence minister Rajnath Singh, Himachal Pradesh chief minister Jai Ram Thakur and the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) chief Lieutenant General Harpal Singh inside the Atal Tunnel.

PM Modi apparently had a detailed discussion with the BRO chief at the Atal Tunnel site and told him that road infrastructure on the border areas must be speeded up so that Indian troops can patrol up to the last point. At one point, Gen Harpal Singh told PM that road construction in India is a classic example of “Atmanirbhar Bharat” as not even a single foreigner has helped BRO in construction since the March 2020 lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

While the PM wanted to know in details about the Seri nullah ingress that held up the Atal Tunnel project, he heard the full brief on the Darcha-Padam-Nimu axis. Already 100km of this road has been metalled with another 200km to be completed in the next three years along with a 4.5km tunnel under the over 16,000 feet high Shinku Pass. BRO has decided to validate the new axis this winter by keeping it snow-free for the army’s logistics movement. PM Modi inspected the entire 9.2km of Atal tunnel through open jeep twice and got down in between to understand each and every point.

It is understood that Singh told the Prime Minister that the Sela Tunnel en-route to strategic Tawang will be completed in the next three years. The tunnel foundation was laid by PM Modi on February 10, 2019. The Rs 687 crore project involves a fresh cut of 12km road as well as a three-kilometre tunnel under the Se La, which saw action with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 1962 war.

While the Prime Minister was briefed about Darcha-Nimu road and Se La tunnel, BRO is making plans to cut across through glaciated Saser La in Siachen sector to link up with Murgo-Daulet Beg Oldi axis so that neither China nor Pakistan can threaten supplies to the last post at the Karakoram Pass.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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