The Pir Panjal Railway Tunnel or Banihal railway tunnel is a
11.215 km (7 mile) railway tunnel located in Pir Panjal Range of middle Himalayas in Jammu and Kashmir, India north of Banihal town. It is India's
longest and Asia's second longest
railway tunnel. It is below the existing road tunnel, the Jawahar Tunnel. The tunnel has
been constructed by HCC for IRCON , a PSU , as a part of its Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla
rail link project with a cost of 1672 crores.
Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh and United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia
Gandhi flagged off the first train from Banihal, a town in Ramban district of
the Jammu region, to Qazigund in the Kashmir valley, passing through a tunnel
in the Pir Panchal range on june
26.
They enjoyed the
12-minute ride to Qazigund with 100 students, mostly girls, of the Banihal
Higher Secondary School, and made the 17.8-km ride back to Banihal, passing
through the tunnel, the second longest in Asia. Those who accompanied them were
Governor N.N. Vohra, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, Railway Minister Mallikarjun
Kharge and Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad.
The train services
will be run between Banhilal-Baramulla
in north Kashmir from june 27.
IRCTC Train Route Line
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