The Rohtang Pass at 13,050 ft height offers nothing for its visitors except dust and noxious fumes of vehicular smoke during the dry summer season and long traffic jams on slushy potholed road stretches between Marhi and Grambhu. The slow unscientific pace of work being carried out by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) has turned certain road stretches into sliding zones, leaving behind scars on the once grassy Rohtang Pass of migratory shepherds.
But the “unscientific” widening of the road between Marhi from the Manali side and Gramhu from the Lahaul side has turned into a sliding zone at many places. Unscientific cutting of slopes has breached natural drains of the Rohtang mountain, sinking its fragile land, observe ecologists.
The BRO has set up 2012 as the deadline for completion of the double-laning of the national highway between Manali and Keylong. Despite five months long working season in the Lahaul valley, the BRO is moving at a slow pace on the highway.
No active machinery engaging in the widening work was observed except that the BRO labour force was doing the road surfacing from Rohtang top towards the Marhi side.
There are over a dozen spots between Marchi and Grmabhu, which have become a nightmare for the travellers going to the Lahaul valley. The soil is eroding and several stretches are sliding as the stream water rushing down on steep slopes flows freely through the road or onto the road as the BRO has not constructed proper temporary drains or culverts, taking water through course of streams.
It takes five or six hours during peak traffic hours for a visitor to reach Gramphu or Marhi, a 30 km-long road stretch, rue visitors. “The road is littered with deep slushy potholes, boulders that make journey even hazardous,” they say. More than 500 tourists and other transport vehicles, oil tankers and Army vehicles that cross the Pass daily put breaks on the work as the traffic jams have become the order of the day, rue BRO engineers and workers.
BRO Commander SK Doon says that BRO it taking utmost care in ensuring smooth flow of civilian vehicles and keeping the pace of work of double-laning moving. The machinery being used in cutting and widening is bound to destabilise the land strata, he explains.
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