Zojila Tunnel Breakthrough — World’s Longest Single-Tube Bi-Directional Bypass at 11,578 ft, 6 Months Ahead of Schedule

CURRENT AFFAIRS | 9 JUNE 2026

A decades-old dream of all-weather road connectivity between the Kashmir Valley and Ladakh inched towards reality on Tuesday 9 June 2026 when a controlled blast triggered the long-awaited breakthrough at the Zojila Tunnel — now confirmed as the world’s longest single-tube bi-directional road bypass at record height. The tunnel pierces the formidable Zojila Pass at 11,578 feet above sea level, an altitude that has historically shut the Srinagar-Leh highway for nearly six months of the year due to heavy snowfall.

Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari witnessed the breakthrough blast. According to officials of the National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL), the project’s nodal agency, the breakthrough is six months ahead of schedule — a rare achievement in Himalayan tunnelling, where weather windows, rock instability and supply-chain delays usually push timelines back, not forward.

The execution model bears study. The project is being built by Megha Engineering & Infrastructure Limited (MEIL) on EPC terms, with NHIDCL — a fully-owned Government of India company incorporated under the Companies Act 2013 — as the project authority. The 14.15-km Zojila Tunnel itself sits at the end of a longer corridor that also includes the 6.5-km Z-Morh tunnel, which opened in January 2025. The two together unlock genuinely all-weather connectivity between Sonamarg in the Kashmir Valley and Drass in Kargil district, Ladakh.

For travellers, the transformation is dramatic. Today, the Sonamarg-Drass leg of the Srinagar-Leh highway takes around 3.5 hours in winter, when it is open at all — and is closed for the deep winter months when the Zojila Pass is buried under snow. After commissioning, the same leg will take about 15 minutes, all year. For the Army, which moves men, materiel and rations to Ladakh’s forward positions through this corridor, the strategic significance is immense.

The total project cost is Rs 6,809 crore. Full commissioning of the Zojila Tunnel is targeted for 2027, with several months of finishing work, ventilation, lighting and emergency-systems integration still ahead. The breakthrough itself, however, marks the end of the riskiest phase: tunnel-boring at extreme altitude through volatile Himalayan rock.

The legal-administrative architecture is worth noting. National highways are listed under the Union List of the Seventh Schedule, with the Union exercising executive power over them via Article 73. NHIDCL was set up in 2014 specifically to develop highways in border and strategic areas where the NHAI’s procurement and execution model was not optimised for difficult terrain and security considerations. The Border Roads Organisation (BRO), under the Ministry of Defence, complements NHIDCL by handling purely defence-driven roads in forward areas.

For CLAT 2027 aspirants, the Zojila story sits at the intersection of infrastructure policy, federal architecture (Centre’s role on national highways under the Union List) and the broader Bharatmala Pariyojana framework. Static GK questions on world-record tunnels in India (Atal Tunnel at Rohtang, Z-Morh, Zojila) and on the agency-by-agency mapping (NHAI vs NHIDCL vs BRO) routinely appear.

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