Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, said on Tuesday that the Inter-Modal Station (IMS) that will be built here will be a “world-class” project that will improve the travel experience of pilgrims visiting the Mata Vaishno Devi shrine. He also announced that a 110-kilometer Amarnath Marg, which will lead to the 3,880-metre holy cave shrine of Amarnath in the Himalayas of south Kashmir, will be built at a cost of around Rs 5,300 crore for the convenience of pilgrims. The IMS to be established in Katra will be a world-class state-of-the-art project constructed to improve pilgrims’ travelling experience to Shri Mata Vaishno Devi shrine, the minister said at a press conference in Katra, the base camp for pilgrims visiting the shrine atop Trikuta hills. The minister, who was flanked by Union ministers Jitendra Singh and Gen (retd) V K Singh, as well as Lt Governor Manoj Sinha, said his ministry is undertaking development work in Jammu and Kashmir worth Rs 1,30,000 crore.
In the region, approximately 500 km of road network has been completed since 2014. Forty-one significant tunnels worth Rs 45,000 crore are being built in J&K and Ladakh, and 18 ropeways worth Rs 5,000 crore will be built in the Union Territory he stated. The minister also stated that three corridors worth Rs 35,000 crores are being built between Jammu and Srinagar, which will reduce the existing distance of 320 km between the two cities by 70 km while reducing travel time to four to five hours from the current ten hours. With the development of a cutting-edge road network across the country through every state and UT, the journey from Kashmir to Kanyakumari will no longer be a pipe dream for the people of India, he said. On Tuesday morning, Gadkari arrived in Banihal and inspected the Qazigun-Banihal tunnel, the Peera-Chanderkote tunnel, and the bypass connecting Kashmir to Jammu. He claims that 99 percent of the people working on the tunnels are locals.
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