New Delhi: During the construction of the partially collapsed Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi, part of a larger Char Dham project, there have been around “19-20” collapses in the past five years, reports said.Forty one workers were trapped for 17 days in the tunnel after it collapsed. They were finally pulled out after manual digging for over 26 hours by a dozen experts called ‘rat-miners’.Anshu Manish Khalkho, director (admin and finance) of the National Highways Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (NHIDCL), the public sector unit overseeing the project, was quoted by The Times of India as telling them that, “around 19-20 minor to medium level collapses occurred during the construction of the tunnel” “Such incidents happen during every tunnel construction project but we were unlucky this time as workers got trapped,” he added.This tunnel is part of the big-ticket Char Dham route in the fragile Himalayan eco-zone, which is expected to make all-weather roads between four important Hindu pilgrim sites, the Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath shrines in Uttarakhand.The newspaper cites another official connected with the tunnel construction, but “preferring to remain anonymous,” as saying, “the tunnel had faced numerous cavity collapses due to the challenging geology of the region and significant rock deformation”.In what is likely to add to already existing concerns about no ‘Environment Assessment Impact’ study having been done for this important project, the news report quotes how Bernard Gruppe, the European company “providing design services to Navayuga Engineering, the construction firm that has got the contract for the tunnel construction,” had earlier said that “geological conditions (at the tunnel site) proved to be more challenging than predicted in the tender documents”.‘No experts turned up’The Telegraph reports about the no-show of a team of experts from the Union government which “was expected at the site of the collapsed Uttarkashi tunnel on Thursday to review how safe it was before the resumption of construction.” Uttarakhand government officials said on Thursday, that “it did not arrive.” An Uttarakhand government official told the media, “We were asked to be at the spot to receive them but the team didn’t arrive.” He said there was no information when the team might turn up.As there was no clarity over the central team’s arrival, officials of the private engineering firm with the contract for the tunnel project “sounded confident about resuming work soon.” A company official involved in the project told reporters in Rishikesh, as per The Telegraph, “We will work with doubled enthusiasm on the construction of the tunnel.”“The Prime Minister and the chief minister have boosted our morale. We will complete the project before the 2024 parliamentary elections.”The newspaper recalls that V.K. Singh, Union minister of state for road transport and highways, had said on Tuesday that a high-powered committee of experts would carry out a “security audit” of the project, but had not specified a date.Backstory: Back in the TunnelAs The Wire reported earlier, in 2013 the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance decided to waive environmental clearances for road projects less than 100 km long. Three years later, the NDA made use of this waiver even though the Main Himalayan Thrust – where the Indian plate pushes under the Eurasian plate – not only runs through Uttarakhand but comes close to the tunnel site. This, as activist Himanshu Thakkar wrote, creates obvious “seismic and shear zone implications”.Finding no room for their concerns in this abbreviated planning process, locals approached the National Green Tribunal – and then, the Supreme Court itself – but the Centre’s sidestepping of the environmental clearance process went unchallenged by both.Even as these cases were being heard, the project rolled on. In February 2018, the Cabinet approved the Barkot-Silkyara tunnel – between Gangotri and Yamunotri. In June 2018, the state-owned National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL) awarded the tender for tunnel construction to Hyderabad-based Navayuga Engineering Company.In the same year, Navayuga hired a German-Austrian engineering consultancy called Bernard Gruppe to design and build the tunnel.Navayuga, had also been granted the government’s ambitious Rishikesh-Karnaprayag rail link project in 2020. You can read more about the company here.