Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah directed the Border Roads Organisation to clear the Manali-Leh highway within next three days and asked the officials engaged in relief work to ensure that procedural formalities do not delay the operation. The highway which got swept away by flash floods triggered by a cloudburst on Friday is one of the two road links between the 'cold desert' and other parts of the country.
Bus services between Karnataka and Maharashtra have been suspended following attacks on buses and their crew. The decision was taken given the tension prevailing in the border district of Belagavi over a sensitive issue. The language row began after a group of people allegedly intercepted a KSRTC bus and assaulted its conductor and driver for not speaking to a passenger in Marathi. The passenger, a minor girl, also filed a complaint stating that the conductor misbehaved with her. However, the family of the minor girl has decided to withdraw the case and urged people to stop escalating the matter into a language dispute between Karnataka and Maharashtra.
The Kashmir Valley received fresh snow Sunday that blocked the Jammu-Srinagar national highway yet again. The blockade of the highway stranded hundreds of vehicles at various points on the highway.
The Srinagar-Jammu National Highway, which remained closed for the third day today due to heavy snowfall, is likely to be open by Wednesday, an official spokesman said.
At least 134 highly trained commandos will be despatched in two batches beginning this month for protection of Border Roads Organisation personnel constructing a crucial highway in Afghanistan, sources told PTI in New Delhi on Sunday.
The closure of the only road link resulted in increase in the prices of essential commodities and shortage of LPG and other items.
As part of the mega plan, around 20 bridges, a number of tunnels, airbases and several key roads are being developed in strategically key areas in Arunachal Pradesh to bolster the overall military preparedness, officials said on Monday.
Assessing the unprecedented destruction at rain-ravaged Uttarakhand, including 110 major landslides in small stretches, the Border Roads Organisation has taken a massive road rehabilitation programme in the state, pressing into service about 4,000 men.
The Jammu-Srinagar national highway was reopened for one way traffic after overnight heavy snowfall had blocked it.
The rain ebbed in some places in north India and pelted down in others on Tuesday, with at least seven more people dead and hundreds stranded as raging waters gushed through villages, towns and fields -- from the desert state of Rajasthan to the hills of Himachal Pradesh.
Was Border Roads Organisation commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Ajay Verma killed by militants because he did not pay heed to their demands and the government failed to provide him adequate security?Verma had written two letters to the district administration and police in Kishtwar about threats from militants and also demanded security cover for the men of the organisation, official sources told PTI. But the state failed to provide them security.
Stepping up relief and rescue operations in Uttarakhand, the Union defence ministry has deployed more than 45 choppers belonging to the Army and the Indian Air Force there along with more than 10,000 troops in the rain-ravaged parts of the hill state.
The Congress Working Committee (CWC) condemned the Pahalgam terror attack, calling it a direct assault on the values of the republic. The party accused the BJP of exploiting the tragedy to promote discord and polarization, while urging for unity and solidarity in the face of adversity. The CWC also demanded a comprehensive analysis of the intelligence failures and security lapses that led to the attack.
A massive landslide triggered by torrential rains at Somroli in Udhampur, 275 km from Srinagar, blocked the arterial road in the morning, the police said.
'Many of them are mutilated beyond recognition. Every day an encounter takes place.' 'Bastar has been burnt to ash.'
It has been a week since 41 labourers got trapped inside an under-construction tunnel at Silkyara in Uttarakhand's Uttarkashi district after parts of the structure collapsed following a landslide last Sunday.
The captain and six crew of the Iran-bound ship have been detained and questioned by authorities to ascertain how the explosives went missing after the vessel had set sail from Mumbai on December 22.
"One BRO personnel from the team is still missing," the sources added.
A group of Naxalites killed two persons and damaged an abandoned police camp in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, police said on Saturday.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Monday visited the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel site for a review of the rescue operations being carried out there to evacuate 40 labourers trapped inside since Sunday morning following its partial collapse.
The mortal remains of Sepoy Karam Chand, who died while fighting Chinese aggressors in Arunachal Pradesh in 1962, were consigned to flames with full military honours in his native village near Palampur on Thursday morning. Touching scenes were witnessed at the cremation ground as his family members had assumed that Chand had been made a Prisoner of War.The martyr's body was spotted under the debris by a detachment of the Border Roads Organisation in Walong area on July 1.
Over 800 vehicles, including 178 buses, were stranded on the Jammu-Srinagar highway on Monday morning after the road got blocked due to landslides triggered by heavy snowfall and rain since Saturday, official sources said.
The PLA said the move has 'seriously damaged' border peace and tranquillity.
The road network will stretch from Gujarat to Mizoram.
The two-day-long rescue operation ended on Friday evening in hilly Kishtwar district of Jammu region where eleven persons were killed when two trucks carrying Border Roads Organisation labourers were trapped in a massive landslide early on Thursday. While the rescue teams recovered bodies of seven labourers on Thursday, they finally managed to retrieve the bodies of other four dead labourers on Friday.
Bodies of the two Border Roads Organisation personnel, who were killed in a terror attack in Afghanistan, were on Wednesday flown to Delhi.The bodies of M P Singh and C Govindaswamy, engineers with BRO, were airlifted from Kabul and reached the Indira Gandhi International airport this afternoon.Singh's body will be taken to Varanasi and Govindaswamy's to Tamil Nadu. Suspected Taliban extremists targeted Indian construction workers in Nimroz on Saturday, killing the duo.
Two personnel of Border Roads Organisation were on Saturday killed and several others injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a convoy of Indian road construction workers in south west Afghanistan. Nearly 400 BRO personnel are engaged in construction of a key highway between Zaranj and Delaram in Afghanistan as part of India's assistance programme for reconstruction of the war-torn country.
Pakistan has said that many of its countrymen have also been killed in Afghanistan.
In all, about 290 Indians are engaged in various projects in Afghanistan.
The body will be placed for public homage at the school where his son is studying, ahead of the cremation at the house premises itself, sources said.
The security measures are being intensified by the Afghan government after a fresh assessment suggested increased threat to the Indians, particularly those engaged in construction of a crucial highway from Delaram to Zaranj, sources said. The assessment of the threat was carried out by a two-member team of senior officials of the External Affairs Ministry which went to Afghanistan.
The Amarnath yatra was suspended on Saturday due to closure of the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway in the wake of a landslide triggered by heavy rains in Udhampur district of the state.
Two personnel of the Border Roads Organisation were killed and another injured as National Democratic Front of Bodoland insurgents fired at them in upper Assam's Dhemaji district, on Monday night.
Due to a 'Kisan Mazdoor Mahapanchayat' convened by farmers at the Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi on Thursday, the Delhi Police has beefed up security and deployed heavy force for checking vehicles, which might lead to traffic snarls in the central parts of the city, officials said.
He said the tragic incident, however, would not dampen Indo-Afghan relations
