Challenges Faced in Maintaining the Sevoke-Rangpo Section of NH-10
Arunavo Gupta, Executive Engineer, NH Design Division-IV, Kolkata, and Rajib Chattaraj, Chief Engineer, NH Wing, PWD, West Bengal, elaborate on the challenges in maintaining the Sevoke-Rangpo Section of NH-10 as it is prone to the adverse impact of frequent landslides, rock falls, road bench subsidence, and valley side scouring.
National Highway-10 (NH-10) starts from Banglabandha (near Phulbari) of Indo-Bangladesh border and passes through Siliguri City in West Bengal and enters the hilly terrain of Himalaya near Sevoke and runs almost parallelly to river Teesta for a considerable length connecting the capital of Sikkim, Gangtok after entering in the state of Sikkim from West Bengal in a place called Rangpo. At present, NH-10 is the one and only NH connectivity to the state of Sikkim and also to the Divisional town of Kalimpong of the newly formed Kalimpong district in West Bengal and strategically a very important road as it connects to the China border. From Sevoke to Rangpo, NH-10 is 52Km long National Highway in the state of West Bengal which is unique in many aspects, though apparently similar to other hill roads. The fragile young mountain on one side, the meandering river Teesta with the high-velocity flow on the other side with very close proximity to the river in around 70% of the length in West Bengal portion, NH 10 is very challenging to maintain being prone to frequent landslide, rock fall, road bench subsidence and valley side scouring. Many anthropogenic activities in this complex geological region made its maintenance very tough & the scope of widening of the road limited. In this paper, the authors try to figure out the complexities of the road and the challenges faced to maintain and widen the road. The recent incident of the Glacial Lake Outburst Flood in Sikkim (October 2023) and its devastating effects on NH-10 have also been discussed.
