Reported by Roopak Goswami

Guwahati: Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari on Thursday underscored the urgent need to build climate-resilient road infrastructure in India's fragile Himalayan belt, announcing a series of technology-driven measures and institutional collaborations to tackle landslides and geo-hazards.

Addressing a national workshop on "Landslide Mitigation Measures for Resilient Hill Roads" at Bharat Mandapam, Gadkari said the region's complex terrain, slope instability, and increasing frequency of disasters such as landslides, cloudbursts, and earthquakes pose a "continuing engineering and safety challenge."

He said the government has decided to prioritise slope stabilisation before initiating road construction in hilly areas, marking a shift towards long-term durability and risk reduction.

Highlighting key initiatives, Gadkari pointed to multiple partnerships with national institutions, including THDC India Limited for landslide treatment in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh, the Defence Geo-informatics Research Establishment for geo-hazard mitigation, and the Geological Survey of India for geological investigations and data sharing in major tunnel and corridor projects.

He added that technical collaboration with the National Institute of Rock Mechanics is strengthening geotechnical scrutiny, tunnel safety audits, and monitoring systems.

The minister also announced the deployment of InSAR-based landslide monitoring and early warning systems along a 100-km stretch of the Char Dham route in Uttarakhand, alongside support to the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee for developing real-time hillslope instability guidelines.

Gadkari said advanced survey technologies such as LiDAR and UAV mapping are being integrated into project planning, enabling detailed landslide susceptibility mapping and data-driven decision-making.