In the wake of the tunnel disaster at Uttarakhand, while the central government has decided to conduct a safety audit of 29 under-construction tunnels in India, it turns out that there is no dedicated safety unit with the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) for such projects. The position is similar with the other large road and tunnel building organisation, the Border Roads Organisation.
Neither has the Comptroller and Auditor General apparently conducted any audit ever to assess safety issues in such projects, satisfying itself with only checks on the money spent in the projects. In fact, India does not have its own standards of tunnel safety, depending instead on the British Standards-06164 issued in 2019.
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On Wednesday, the government announced a safety audit of all 29 under-construction tunnels across the country. “NHAI officials, along with a team of experts from Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) as well as other tunnel experts, will inspect the ongoing tunnel projects and will submit a report within seven days”, a government release said. These projects include 12 in Himachal Pradesh, 6 in Jammu and Kashmir, 2 each in…
