The Indian Air Force (IAF) was ferrying stranded tourists, locals and students between Jammu and Srinagar as the strategic Jammu-Srinagar Highway remained blocked due to massive landslides and snow for the sixth consecutive day on Monday.
The private airlines were also operating additional flights to carry the stranded passengers.
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The IAF made a couple of sorties to fly the students from Kashmir to Jammu to facilitate their appearance for the GATE examination.
Authorities said that massive landslides at Marog near Ramban have blocked the highway and round the clock efforts were being made by men of the Border Roads Organization (BRO) to clear the roads.
Jammu’s divisional commissioner, Sanjeev Verma, IGP MK Sinha, and IGP (Traffic) Alok Kumar, on Monday, flew to the affected area to personally monitor the highway clearing operations.
The other road link with the Valley, through the Mughal Road, is non-functional for over a month because of heavy snow, as a result of which hundreds of passengers and vehicles have been held up in Jammu.
The vehicular traffic and other movements on the Jammu-Srinagar Highway had been affected due to the avalanches and heavy snowfall near the Jawahar Tunnel where eight persons were killed as they got buried under the snow.