New Delhi: Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari Tuesday asked the Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited, the company constructing a strategically crucial tunnel on Srinagar-Leh highway in Jammu & Kashmir region, to complete the work by December 2023, few months before the general election that is expected to take place sometime in early 2024.
“Though the target date for its completion (Zojila tunnel) is after several years but I have given them the challenge to complete it by December 2023 so that it can be inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi January 26, 2024,” Gadkari told the reporters at the Zojila tunnel construction site near Baltal on Srinagar-Leh highway.
Gadkari said that he has asked Megha Engineering’s Krishna Reddy, the managing director of the company constructing the strategically crucial tunnel, to complete the work by the end of 2023.
“As per the contract, the company is required to complete the tunnel by December 2026 but I have asked the company officials here and stressed that they must complete the work by December 2023 so that it will also become a world record,” Gadkari said in presence of top officials of MEIL.
The minister said all the clearances have already been issued by the Central and UT authorities and no clearance such as environmental or land clearances were pending.
“I have told Krishna Reddy Ji to finish the work by December 2023 and we will extend every possible support,” he said.
Yesterday a top official of the National Highway and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL), the nodal agency under the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, had told media that the government wanted to finish the tunnel before the target date of December 2026.