All 41 workers trapped inside the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand since November 12, were successfully rescued on Tuesday.
The rescued workers were draped in orange marigold flower garlands in celebration as they were greeted by state officials, government photographs showed, with a line of ambulances taking them to the hospital.
"I was inside when the pipe was being pushed. When I saw the (trapped) workers, I came back. Now, it's like an open road and anyone can come and go," said Balinder Yadav, a worker involved in the rescue operation.
The challenging rescue operation, involving manual drilling and extensive efforts by the rescue teams, marks a significant breakthrough in the ongoing mission to bring all the trapped workers to safety.
Designated as "rat miners," these laborers, deployed after machinery failures, displayed commendable progress overnight as they manually drilled through rocks and gravel.
Despite challenges in digging a tunnel using machinery, the "rat miners" demonstrated their expertise in this primitive but effective method, reminiscent of burrowing rats.
A 41-bed separate ward has been readied at the Community Health Centre in Chinyalisaur for Silkyara tunnel evacuees and 41 ambulances were waiting outside the tunnel to rush them there.
An iron mesh which came in the way of the auger machine drilling through the rubble at Silkyara tunnel to create an escape passage for the trapped workers was also removed.
Former advisor to the prime minister's office Bhaskar Khulbe said it took about six hours to cut the iron mesh.
According to rescue teams, the operation involved drilling through the debris to push wide pipes for the trapped workers to walk out through. The auger machine, which drills through about 3 metres of debris in an hour, had earlier hit a metal obstruction.
The workers were trapped since November 12, when the under-construction tunnel from Silkyara to Barkot got blocked due to debris falling in a 60-meter stretch on the Silkyara side.
The collapsed tunnel is a section of the ambitious $1.5 billion Char Dham highway project, envisioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to connect four Hindu pilgrimage sites through an extensive network of roads spanning 890 km.
While the cause of the cave-in remains undisclosed, the region's susceptibility to landslides, earthquakes, and floods underscores the inherent risks associated with such large-scale infrastructure projects.
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