While the nation was celebrating the inauguration of the Chenab Railway Bridge, the chief woman engineer of the project, Dr. Madhavi Latha, was in Madrid, Spain. Dr. Latha, a distinguished professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, and her team have been the driving force behind the Chenab Rail Bridge. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu praised her dedication by calling her a 'Telugu beti'. It was not without reason that Dr. Latha devoted 17 years of her life to this bridge project which is being called 'an architectural miracle'. Gold medalist Dr. Latha joined IISc as a faculty in 2003 and has never looked back since. When the country was appreciating her and her team's amazing work, Dr. Latha refused to take centre stage.
She tweeted that media reports that the 'woman behind this mission' 'made the impossible possible' and created a miracle in building the bridge are baseless. -I am one of the thousands who deserve appreciation for the Chenab bridge, he wrote and urged that 'my privacy be respected.' Yet credit must be given where credit is due and Dr Lata fully deserves this unique bridge. The task was not easy. Despite the difficult topography of the region, harsh weather and other challenges, she successfully completed the task. As a geotechnical consultant, Dr Lata adopted a 'design as you go' approach as predetermined, rigid designs were not possible here.
The Chenab bridge was dedicated to the nation earlier this month. It was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the occasion of Eid-ul-Azha. The bridge connects the Kashmir valley with the rest of India and stands at a height of 359 metres above the Chenab river, higher than the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The world's highest railway arch bridge is 1315 metres long and is all-weather durable and blast resistant. It is located in a seismically sensitive area, so it is designed to withstand strong earthquakes and winds of up to 266 kmph.
The Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) project also includes India's first cable-stayed rail bridge 'Anji Khad Bridge', which is supported by 96 cables and is another engineering marvel. The project laid tracks through bridges and tunnels across deep valleys. 90 per cent of the total route passes through 943 bridges and 36 major tunnels, including India's longest railway tunnel T-50, which is over 12.7 km long. Built at a cost of about Rs 44,000 crore, the bridge is not only a symbol of state-of-the-art engineering but also ensures connectivity to the Kashmir Valley. Earlier, trains used to run only between Sambaldan and Baramulla and rail connectivity to other parts of the country was only up to Katra.
According to the government, a 'Kashmir version' of the Vande Bharat train running on this route has been designed, which will have climate-specific features like advanced heating system for sub-zero temperatures, heating element for defrosting on the windshield and ensuring clear visibility in harsh winters. It has been a long wait, almost 70 years. This project to connect Kashmir with the country started in the 1970s when Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister. In 1994, the project got cabinet approval and in 2002, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government approved funding for land acquisition. The Qazigund-Baramulla section became operational in 2009, the Banihal-Qazigund section in 2013 and the Udhampur-Katra section in 2014. The Banihal to Sambaldan section started in 2023 and now the Katra to Sambaldan, which was considered the most difficult part, has been completed and the bridge has been dedicated to the nation.
Credit should be given where it is due and this time the Modi government has done a commendable job by speeding up this project. So when Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav called it a 'historic achievement', he was not wrong. It is indeed a historic achievement, from an engineering, geographical and psychological point of view. Psychologically, this bridge will not only reduce the geographical distance but will also connect the valley, which has been isolated till now, with the rest of India. From the government's point of view, it is part of an inclusive policy to connect Kashmir with the mainstream. Reducing distance brings hearts closer, whether this will happen, only time will tell, but the Modi government has always been a pioneer in terms of infrastructure. In the last eleven years of its tenure, the Modi government has started many big projects and among these, every Indian is proud of the Chenab bridge.