IN PICS: Srinagar Jammu highway opens

The 300-km Srinagar Jammu national highway, the lone road linking Kashmir valley to rest of the country was thrown open for one way traffic on Wednesday evening, thanks to the round-the-clock efforts put in by the border roads organisation to make the road traffic worthy.

"We have re-opened the road for one way traffic," said Brigadier T P S Rawat, chief engineer Beacon Kashmir.

Brigadier Rawat said over 1,000 vehicles, mostly trucks carrying essential supplies to the valley were on way to Srinagar.

"Around 300 trucks crossed the Jawahar Tunnel late Wednesday evening despite fresh snowfall in the Pir Panchal mountain range this evening where the tunnel is located," he said.

The chief engineer said other vehicles were also nearing the tunnel area to cross over to the valley after 'my men cleared the road'.

He said, "We have been working round-the-clock since Tuesday morning to clear the accumulated snow and landslides at several points on the highway."

"On Tuesday we cleared 120 vehicles carrying supplies to the valley which were stranded at different points on the highway and we also allowed 150 vehicles to move towards Jammu stranded in the tunnel area."

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He said the areas around Shaitani Nallah, Panthal and Ramsu were problematic, but added that 'the problems were overcome by our men and machinery'.

The clearance of the highway will ease the acute shortage of essential commodities felt in the valley in the aftermath of the heavy snowfall early this week.

The valley has been facing shortage of cooking gas, fresh vegetables, diary and poultry products and mutton. The valley's weather has shown marked improvement in past two days with minimum and maximum temperatures rising and the sun shining brightly.

Improvement in weather has given some respite to the people who were reeling under intense cold.