With reference to 'Atal Tunnel' which of the following statements is/are correct ?
1. This tunnel is the world's longest highway tunnel.
2. This tunnel is built in the Pir Panjal range of Himalayas.
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Question

With reference to 'Atal Tunnel' which of the following statements is/are correct ?
1. This tunnel is the world's longest highway tunnel.
2. This tunnel is built in the Pir Panjal range of Himalayas.
Select the correct answer from the code given below :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, Only 2. Statement 2 is true: the Atal Tunnel is bored under the Rohtang Pass through the Pir Panjal range of the Himalayas, in Himachal Pradesh. Statement 1 is false as written, and that is the whole point of the question. The Atal Tunnel's record is a heavily qualified one — it is described as the world's longest highway single-tube tunnel above 10,000 feet (about 3,048 metres). It is nowhere near the world's longest highway tunnel: the Laerdal Tunnel in Norway runs about 24.5 km against the Atal Tunnel's 9.02 km, and even within India the Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee (Chenani-Nashri) tunnel in Jammu and Kashmir is marginally longer at about 9.3 km. Strip the altitude qualifier away and the claim collapses.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) This accepts the superlative at face value. The Pir Panjal half is right, but 'world's longest highway tunnel' is not — the qualifier 'above 10,000 feet' is doing all the work in the actual record, and Norway's 24.5 km Laerdal Tunnel is nearly three times as long.  (c) It rejects too much. Statement 1 is indeed false, but statement 2 is correct — the tunnel passes beneath the Rohtang Pass, which lies in the Pir Panjal range of the Lesser (Middle) Himalaya.  (d) This is the exact inversion of the truth: it keeps the false superlative and rejects the one verifiable geographical fact in the question.

Concept: The Atal Tunnel is a 9.02 km horseshoe-shaped, single-tube, bi-lane highway tunnel on the Manali-Leh road, built by the Border Roads Organisation and inaugurated on 3 October 2020. It runs beneath the Rohtang Pass (about 3,978 m) in the Pir Panjal range, so it removes the pass — and the five to six months of snow closure that came with it — from the journey into the Lahaul valley. An emergency escape tunnel is built into the main tunnel section itself. It was renamed after former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2019.

State PCS 2025 Q8 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q8 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer