During the Kargil War of 1999-2000, the Pakistani Army and Terrorist groups had cut the main roads connecting Jammu & Kashmir with the rest of the country such as the National Highway 1. This was an eyeopener for the Indian Government and Indian Military Strategists to find one or more alternative route to reenforce troops and logistics to the borders. Besides the current Manali-Leh highway through Rohtang Pass always filled with traffic and traffic jams for more than 5-6 hours is a very common phenomenon in this route. Furthermore, the road remains closed due to heavy snowfall during the winter days. This will also help the people of Himachal Pradesh who gets disconnected from the rest of India during the winter days, and only the airways remain the only way of transportation.
But all these problems are over, due to the newly opened Atal Tunnel, which is the longest tunnel in the world situated above 10,000 feet. This is an all-weather round the clock available tunnel reducing the time and distance of journey between Manali and Leh by 4-5 hours and 46 km. There are several emergency precautions taken by the developers the Border Roads Organization of BRO to protect the people using it such as integrated carriage cross-section for emergency evacuation and emergency telephones in every 150 meters in this 9.02 km long tunnel.
According to the officials of the BRO, the tunnel can capacitate around 4500 vehicles on a daily basis between 40-80 km per hour. That includes all the passenger vehicles and military convoys.
The whole INR 3200 crore or USD 438 million project was announced on 3rd June 2000 by the former Prime Minister of India Bharat Ratna Shree Atal Bihari Bajpayee. On 28th June 2020, Congress Chairperson and Member of Parliament Mrs Sonia Gandhi laid its foundation stone. It took ten long years and a few major and minor incidents to complete the whole project. Lastly, on 3rd October 2020, it was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
But within the 24 hours of inauguration, the Chinese Communist Party’s Mouthpiece the Global Times has threatened that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is capable of destroying the whole tunnel if any war breakouts between India and China. This can be treated as very common as the Galwan incident became a true eyeopener for the world towards Chinese Aggregation and Encroachment policies.