DEHRADUN/SILKYARA: In a dramatic alliance, six highly skilled ‘rat-hole’ miners from UP’s Jhansi have teamed up with the Indian Army on the mission to rescue 41 trapped workers from the depths of Uttarkashi’s Silkyara tunnel.Renowned for their unparalleled expertise in navigating and digging through confined spaces, these miners have been tasked with manually burrowing through the remaining 10-12 meters of rubble that separate the workers and freedom.By Monday evening — day 16 of the operation — the miners had already successfully excavated nearly a metre within just two hours.Meanwhile, ‘Plan B’ that entails vertical drilling from the top of the hill over the tunnel and lifting the workers one by one in buckets — Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam had started the boring on Sunday — made considerable progress till Monday afternoon: 36 meters out of a total of 86 meters was drilled.NDMA reveals six rescue plans for trapped workers in Uttarkashi's Silkyara Tunnel collapseThe ‘rat-hole’ miners started working after a team extracted the blades and other components of the auger drilling machine that had become lodged inside the 800mm wide escape passage being built in the Silkyara tunnel on Friday, leading to suspension of the operation for several hours.WatchUttarkashi Tunnel Collapse update: Damaged parts of auger machine inside steel escape cleared