Uttrakhand CM Pushkar Dhami visits Joshimath to assess situation

Uttrakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami visited sinking Joshimath on Saturday to assess the situation on the ground, a day after he directed immediate evacuation of around 600 affected families.

He met the local people and assured them of all help. The CM held discussions with a team of officials and experts who have been camping in the town since Thursday and took their feedback on the evacuation exercise, officials said.

The chief minister also visited houses in which huge cracks have appeared on the walls and ceilings.

"Evacuating affected families is the government's priority for now. We are also working on a long-term rehabilitation strategy," Dhami told reporters.

After visiting the affected areas in the Himalayan town, Dhami said suitable places for relocation of residents near Pipalkoti and Gauchar are also being identified.

The officials have been asked not to get entangled in long procedural complexities and take direct clearance from him for projects related to treatment of drainage and sewage systems in Joshimath, he said.

Dhami said Joshimath is an important place from the cultural, religious and tourism point of view and all efforts will be made to save it.

The chief minister had on Friday said officials have been asked to shift around 600 families living in endangered houses in Joshimath to safe locations.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi expressed concern over the plight of people in Joshimath and asked the state government to take care of the affected populace and ensure their safety in this cold weather.

"The pictures coming from Joshimath in Uttarakhand are horrifying... I am deeply disturbed. Wide cracks in houses, seepage of water, cracks in the ground and subsidence of roads are a matter of great concern... A landslide caused the Bhagwati temple to collapse," he said in a Facebook post in Hindi.

"Going against nature by continuous digging and unplanned construction on the mountains has led to the people of Joshimath facing a terrible crisis today," he also said.

Joshimath, the gateway to famous pilgrimage sites like Badrinath and Hemkund Sahib and international skiing destination Auli, is facing a major challenge due to land subsidence.

People have been expressing their unhappiness against the government for the alleged indifference with which it treated the warnings about a dangerous situation of buildings in the Himalayan town due to heavy construction activities going on around it.

Many have blamed the NTPC's Tapovan-Vishnugad hydel project for the situation.

"We have been drawing the attention of authorities for the past 14 months. But we were not heeded. Now when the situation is getting out of hand, they are sending expert teams to assess things," Joshimath Bachao Sangharsh Samiti convenor Atul Sati said.

"If attention was paid in time to what we were saying things would not have been so alarming in Joshimath," he added.

Read | Joshimath: Ignored warnings and a brewing crisis

Land subsidence had made the houses of 14 families insecure in November 2021 itself, Sati recalled.

He said people held a demonstration following this at the tehsil office on November 16, 2021 demanding rehabilitation and handed a memorandum to the SDM who acknowledged that even the tehsil office premises had developed cracks .

"If the government was aware of the problem, why didn't it act for more than a year to address it? What does that show?" Sati asked.

Meanwhile, a seer moved the Supreme Court seeking that the Joshimath crisis be declared a national disaster.

Contending that the incident has occurred due to large-scale industrialisation, the plea filed by Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati sought immediate financial assistance and compensation to the people of Uttarakhand.

It has also sought direction to the National Disaster Management Authority to actively support the residents of Joshimath in this challenging time.

"No development is needed at the cost of human life and their ecosystem and if anything such is happening it is the duty of the state and the Union government to stop the same immediately at war level," the plea said.