Traffic movement along a 30km stretch of the NH10, the principal highway that connects Sikkim and Kalimpong with the rest of the country, will remain closed till Friday morning as repair work in Swetijhora, where a cave-in occurred, is not yet over.

Due to the heavy monsoonal downpour in the region, a stretch of the road that had recently caved in at Swetijhora, around 35km from Siliguri, on the NH10 stretch, had widened precariously on August 3.

The National Highway & Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL), which maintains the highway, announced a complete halt in traffic from August 3 evening to Wednesday evening.

However, on Wednesday, NHIDCL officials came up with a fresh notice stating that the closure was extended for two more days.

“Considering the safety of the passengers, the traffic movement for all classes of vehicles shall be closed on NH10 between Coronation Bridge (Sevoke) and Chitrey (30km apart) from Wednesday to Friday 9am,” said an official of NHIDCL on Wednesday evening.

Sources said that as much as around 3 metres of the 5-metre-wide road had caved in, making it precarious for vehicles to pass through that stretch.

As a result, tourists and others commuting to Sikkim and Kalimpong from Siliguri and vice-versa are having to take detours through the Rangpo-Munsung-Algarah-Lava-Gorubathan-Sevoke route or the Rangpo-Chitrey-Kalimpong-Lava-Gorubathan-Sevoke route. The detours are both time-consuming and costlier because more fuel is required.

Railway tunnel

The IRCON International Limited, which has been executing the ambitious Sevoke-Rangpo railway project to include the Himalayan state of Sikkim in the Indian railway map, has started clearing debris from the railway tunnel site at Rabijhora in Sikkim.

On Tuesday, a portion of the external wall of an abit portal of tunnel 7 of the railway project had collapsed after a landslide at the site. An adit portal is a horizontal or semi-horizontal passage made in the side of a hill or mountain for mining and construction.

Rain forecast

Officials at the regional office of the Indian Meteorological Department in Gangtok forecast heavy to very heavy rainfall in most of the districts of Sikkim till August 12.

“There is a similar rain alert in Bengal's districts of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Kalimpong for the next 48 hours,” said an official.