Success, Success 

The rescue operations to evacuate the 41 workers trapped after a part of an under-construction tunnel collapsed in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi ended on Thursday, after 17 days. Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami have been closely monitoring the rescue operation. The initial plan under the multiple-agency led rescue operation was to evacuate workers through horizontal drilling with the expertise of international tunnelling experts. However, in the final stretch of the operation, the banned manual “rat-hole”-mining technique was employed after high-tech machines, or augers, failed to drill through the nearly 60 metres of rock that has threatened to bury the workers.  The workers were pulled out through a passageway made of welded pipes which rescuers previously pushed through rocks.  They survived on food and oxygen supplied through narrow steel pipes. According to offiicials, all the workers are in good health.