New Delhi: The Union Cabinet has approved infrastructure projects worth over Rs 31,000 crore, including the construction of the country’s first road-cum-rail tunnel under the Brahmaputra river in Assam. This twin-tube public tunnel with approach roads for vehicles and trains is the second tunnel in the world and was built at a cost of Rs 18,662 crore.It will connect Gohpur and Numaligarh in Assam and reduce travel time from about 6 hours to just 20 minutes. Announcing the cabinet decision, I&B Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the project, which will be fully funded by the government, will not only shorten the travel distance from 240 kilometers to about 34 kilometers and improve connectivity, but is also strategically important. The four-lane tunnel will ensure high-speed connectivity to Arunachal Pradesh and provide “strategic resilience” for defense purposes. The minister said the twin pipelines will be connected to each other at a distance of 500 meters.
Officials said the tunnel will be built about 32 meters below the lowest river bed of the Brahmaputra River. One of the tubes will be equipped with a monorail track that will not allow vehicles to move as the train passes through the tube.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the Brahmaputra Tunnel Project a “landmark initiative to promote connectivity in the Northeast”.“…this transformative project will enhance connectivity, reduce logistics costs and accelerate growth in Assam and the entire Northeast,” he said in a post on X.TOI has learned that the government initially included connectivity between Gopur and Numaligarh as part of the Special Accelerated Road Development Scheme for the Northeast in 2008 by building a bridge. But later a proposal was made to build a road tunnel under the Brahmaputra River. Later, it was modified to have a tunnel shared by vehicles and trains.A similar 22-kilometer road-cum-rail tunnel through the Northeastern Chicken Neck corridor is also in the planning stages. Apart from tunnels, the cabinet also approved three NH projects with a total cost of over Rs 11,000 crore: a 107.7-km-long four-lane highway in Gujarat, a 154.6-km-long highway in Maharashtra and an 80-km-long NH-167 corridor in Telangana.In the railways sector, three multi-track projects covering 12 districts of Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra and Karnataka were approved at an estimated cost of Rs 18,509 crore. The approved projects will add 389 kilometers to the existing rail network. The multi-track project is scheduled to be completed by March 2031. These include the laying of the third and fourth lines between Kasala and Manmad in Maharashtra, which will have the second longest tunnel on the rail network.
