Union minister for road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari will attend the breakthrough ceremony at the strategically important Zojila tunnel, located at the border of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh on June 9, a senior National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) official said.Vehicles pass from Zoji La Pass. (ANI Video Grab)The 13.15km tunnel, which cuts through the Zojila Pass on the Srinagar-Leh National Highway will link Baltal in Ganderbal district in Kashmir with Minamarg in Kargil, Ladakh, reducing over three hours journey to just 15 minutes. The total sanctioned cost of the project stands at ₹6,808.69 crore.However, when asked whether the entire road project, including approach roads, ventilation systems would be commissioned before the February 2028 deadline that Gadkari said in Parliament last year, the official declined to provide further details.This comes after the Z-Morh tunnel at Sonamarg was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January 2025.These two tunnels are central to India’s ambitious all-weather connectivity plan between Srinagar and Leh, boosting military mobility and logistics support for deployed forces in the Ladakh sector and its tourism.Once complete, the Zojila tunnel will be India’s longest road tunnel and Asia’s longest bi-directional tunnel at an altitude of 11,578 feet.The tunnel is also of considerable strategic importance, enabling faster movement of troops and supplies to border areas close to both the Line of Control and the Line of Actual Control.Also Read:Zojila tunnel completion delayed by over 2 years: Nitin Gadkari tells Lok SabhaThe original deadline for the project under the current plan was September 2026, with a ceremonial blasting led by Gadkari in October 2020.However, delays caused by the pandemic, a terrorist attack at the nearby Sonamarg tunnel project, and extreme weather conditions pushed the completion date.Before that, the foundation stone was laid by Modi in May 2018 after Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) won the contract which was terminated in January 2019 after the conglomerate sank into financial difficulties.Gadkari sent the project for review by an expert group, and once the report was approved in May 2020, bids were invited in June 2020.The project was subsequently awarded to Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited (MEIL), with work formally inaugurated on October 15, 2020.In 2025, two snow avalanches not only halted work but also forced MEIL to evacuate over 1,000 workers from the area for safety reasons.As reported previously by HT, the Border Road Organisation’s (BRO) effort to keep the Zojila open during this winter faced avalanche-related setbacks, underscoring the extreme conditions that make this corridor one of the most dangerous in the world.