SRINAGAR : Hundreds of vehicles, mostly trucks, remained stranded following the closure of the 300-km-long Srinagar-Jammu national highway for third day today due to snow and landslides.
Meanwhile, dozens of villages, including those near the Line of Control (LoC) also remained cut off with their respective district and tehsil headquarters due to heavy snowfall. The national highway, connecting the Ladakh region with the Kashmir valley also remained closed since December last year, due to accumulation of several feet snow. A traffic police official told that the highway, linking the Kashmir valley with the rest of the country, remained closed due to snow and landslides, triggered by rains. A portion of a hill collapsed and blocked the highway at Kheri, he said adding fresh landslides occurred at several other places in Ramban area.
The Border Roads Organisation (BRO), responsible for the maintainance of the highway, has pressed into service sophisticated machines and men to clear the landslides and put through the road.
Spokespersons said traffic on the highway will be resumed only after receiving green signal from the BRO and traffic police personnel deployed at different places on the highway. Meanwhile, hundreds of vehicles, majority of them trucks are stranded on the highway for the past four days. Trucks loaded with essentials and oil tankers for Kashmir are stranded at different places, including Udhampur, Nagrota, Batote and Jammu.
Empty trucks and oil tankers are also stranded on this side of the Jawahar tunnel.
Truckers said that they are facing acute shortage of water and essentials on the highway.
They alleged that despite repeated assurance by the administration that adequate measures have been taken for them in case of closure of the highway nothing in visible on the ground (AGENCIES)
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