Context

The Chenani-Nashri tunnel, the longest tunnel in Jammu and Kashmir, will be renamed after Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.

About

About Chenani-Nashri tunnel:

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated this tunnel in April, 2017.
• This tunnel links Kashmir Valley with Jammu by an all-weather route.
• This 9 km long, twin-tube, all-weather tunnel between Udhampur and Ramban in Jammu & Kashmir is not only India’s longest highways tunnel but also Asia’s longest bi-directional highways tunnel.
• Built at an elevation of 1200 metres on one of the most difficult Himalayan terrains, the tunnel cuts the travel time between Jammu and Srinagar by two hours, bypassing about 41 kms of road length.
• It also ensures an all-weather passage on a route that often sees heavy traffic jams and disruptions due to landslides, snow, sharp curves, breakdown of vehicles and accidents.
• The tunnel is a part of the 286-km-long four-laning of the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway.
• The tunnel has an efficient, transverse ventilation system. There are inlets bringing fresh air at 8 metre intervals and outlet for exhaust every 100 metres.
• There is also a fully-integrated control system with ventilation, communication, power supply, incident detection, SOS call box and fire fighting.
• Fitted with intelligent traffic mechanism, the tunnel has fully automatic smart control and no human intervention will be required for its operations.
• The tunnel is also equipped with advanced scanners to ward off any security threat. Very few tunnels in the world have this kind of fully integrated tunnel control.
  
  

  About Shyama Prasad Mukharjee: Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was born in a Bengali family in 1901. At the age of 33, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee became the youngest vice-chancellor of Calcutta University in 1934. During Mukherjee’s term as Vice-Chancellor, Rabindranath Tagore delivered the university convocation address in Bengali for the first time, and the Indian vernacular was introduced as a subject for the highest examination. Mukherjee demanded the partition of Bengal in 1946 to prevent the inclusion of its Hindu-majority areas in a Muslim-dominated East Pakistan. In May 1947, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee wrote a letter to Lord Mountbatten telling him that Bengal must be partitioned even if India was not. After he left the Indian National Congress due to difference of opinion with the then-Prime Minister Dr Jawaharlal Nehru on Jammu and Kashmir issues, he co- founded Janata Party in the year 1977-1979, which later on became the Bharatiya Janata Party. He was the independent India’s first Minister of Industry and Supply. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee died after 40 days of being arrested by the Jammu and Kashmir State police for entering the state without permit. He passed away in jail under mysterious circumstances.