Govt plans Rs 12,000-cr project to connect Char Dham

The highways ministry is planning to connect Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri in Uttarakhand with 889 km of disaster-proof two-lane roads at a cost of Rs 12,000 crore.

Officials said detailed project reports were in the final stages and the ministry was likely to invite bids for road stretches in October.

The Char Dham Yatra during April-November is among the most popular Hindu pilgrimages. Three million tourists registered for the yatra in 2012, but the number has declined since floods and landslides killed about 5,000 persons the following year. This year, 750,000 pilgrims have registered.

The road network will be built in seven packages over three years. The ministry intends to award each engineering, procurement and construction contractor projects not more than Rs 1,000 crore.

Project reports for the new road network have been prepared with buy-ins from the Geological Survey of India, Survey of India, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Central Water Commission, and Disaster Mitigation and Management Centre.

The ministries of aviation, tourism, home affairs, revenue, forests and irrigation also contributed, a highways ministry official said.

"We are planning to realign and stabilise all major landslide locations. Realignments will be kept away from the river horizontally as well as vertically. Bridges, viaducts and tunnels will bypass landslide-prone zones and routes with substandard geometrics," the official added.

Suggestions from the Border Roads Organisation, the Uttarakhand public works department and local villagers were considered for realignments and bypasses.

"The consultations were designed to make the pilgrimage less arduous and reduce the impact of natural calamity," the official added.

"Uttarakhand is vulnerable to floods, earthquakes and landslides. Geologists have warned before undertaking major infrastructure projects here, proper study should be done, devising appropriate methods," Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator for the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, told Business Standard.

The government will undertake an environmental impact study for the road network.

The roads will be connected to the state's 20 helipads, so that tourists can be evacuated in emergency. Wayside amenities include food joints, rest houses and parking areas.

"The project involves reconstructing all narrow and weak bridges and increasing the number of cross-drainage structures. It will also provide bypasses and realignments for towns and built up areas," the highway ministry official added.