A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices PS Narasimha and JB Pardiwala asked petitioner Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati to approach the Uttarakhand high court with his petition.
'We are even prepared to sit out in the freezing cold till our demand is met'
The demolition of 'unsafe' buildings in subsidence-hit Joshimath in Uttarakhand resumed on Saturday as the weather improved, even as the number of buildings with cracks rose to 863, officials said.
According to the Jyotirmath administration, these cracks have increased in the last 15 days.
Located on Badrinath National Highway (NH-58), residents of Selang said they are scared and the Joshimath crisis has only deepened their fears.
The chief minister will visit Joshimath on Saturday, meet the affected people and hold a meeting with officials.
Talking to PTI, he said the development works should be implemented by protecting the lives of the people.
The number of subsidence-affected homes rose to 678 while 27 more families were evacuated to safety, a bulletin from the Disaster Management Authority in Chamoli said, adding so far 82 families have been shifted to safe locations in the town.
The administration started preparing for the demolition of two precariously standing hotels in subsidence-hit Joshimath in Uttarakhand on Tuesday, but faced protests from their owners and locals on the issue of compensation, while more families were evacuated from the danger zone as the number of affected houses rose to over 700.
On January 10, the top court had refused urgent hearing of the plea, saying there are 'democratically elected institutions' to deal with the situation and all important matters should not come to it.
The decision was taken in a high-level review meeting chaired by principal secretary to prime minister PK Mishra.
The subsidence zone is located at central Joshimath only including the Army Helipad and Narsingh temple, the satellite images revealed.
The number of houses that have developed cracks has now risen to 826 out of which 165 are in the "unsafe zone", a bulletin from the Disaster Management Authority said.
Forty-one Border Road Organisation labourers working to clear snow near the high altitude border village of Mana in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district were trapped under an avalanche on Friday.
Uttarakhand minister Satpal Maharaj said an inquiry will be conducted to find out how multi-storey buildings were allowed to be constructed in Joshimath which has been sinking for at least 20 years.
It is a 165 MW run-of-the-river scheme proposed in Dhauli Ganga river in Darma valley.
The Uttarakhand government on Friday decided to waive for six months electricity and water bills of families and individuals affected in the subsidence-hit Joshimath.
The bodies of the last four of the trapped labourers were pulled out from the site of the avalanche-hit Border Roads Organisation (BRO) camp in Chamoli on Sunday, taking the death toll to eight as authorities ended the nearly 60-hour rescue operation.
A Border Roads Organisation team will be stationed in Joshimath to monitor the yatra on a day-to-day basis and ensure immediate treatment of cracks on roads or any other problem that might arise, the chief minister said.
Each disaster has the same message: Learn to respect the mountains before you build tunnels, roads, and houses, notes Sunita Narain.
The avalanche hit the BRO camp between Mana and Badrinath between 5:30 am and 6 am on Friday, burying the workers inside eight containers and a shed, according to the Army.
Two foreign women mountaineers, who were stranded at a height of 6,015 metres on way to the Chaukhamba III peak in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district, were rescued on Sunday morning, the District Disaster Management Centre in Gopeshwar said.
Two teams of glaciologists will head to Joshimath-Tapovan on Monday to study the causes of massive flood caused after a part of the Nanda Devi glacier broke off in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district, the director of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology said.
'We have to be equally vigilant in the central sector which is where Barahoti lies and also in the Joshimath area.'
Many Dharmagurus attended the Shubh Ashirwad ceremony.
t is wrong to relate the situation in Joshimath with the NTPC tunnel since it is being constructed with the help of a tunnel boring machine
Flooding in Jummagad river flowing near Jumma village on the Joshimath-Niti highway, about 45 km from Joshimath, continued till late night on Monday evening, during which the bridge collapsed.
Many low-lying areas in West Bengal's sub-Himalayan region were reeling from a flood-like situation while major rivers in Bihar were flowing above the danger level at several places as unabated heavy rain lashed the country's eastern parts on Sunday.
Rescue operations continued through Tuesday and Wednesday in Joshimath, Rudraprayag, Dehradun, Rishikesh, Pauri Garhwal in Uttarakhand and in Shimla, Chamoli, Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, for those trapped by landslides.
At a time when the BJP's stars are at the top on the eve of the Lok Sabha polls, the Puri-Joshimath Sankaracharyas may have kick-started a row whose efforts might be to divide Hindus, not in the name of castes, but on what passes for greater belief, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Singh said the Modi government has changed the approach adopted by previous governments that the border areas are buffer zones between the plains and the potential adversary.
'The cracks I saw yesterday were the largest I have seen in my life. We are scared.'
'The problem is that all this reconstruction work is being monitored by the prime minister himself with inputs being provided directly by the PMO so nobody in the state government dare contradict them even if their suggestions are totally contrary to what the ecology of this region requires.'
Locals hold gradual land subsidence responsible for the fissures and attribute it to the widening of the national highway, violation of norms in construction works related to mandi parishad, erosion caused by the Pindar river and unsystematic flushing out of rainwater.
These human interventions in nature, along with climate change, are responsible for the disaster faced by the pilgrim town of Joshimath in Uttarakhand, which is sinking, he said.
Ending the line at Pipalkoti will mean the army will have to cover a longer distance to the China border by road than it would have needed to had the rail link gone up to Joshimath.
'An earthquake of a slightly higher magnitude in the Western Himalayan region is going to be catastrophic -- not just because of the fragility of the region but because of how densely we have occupied it.'
The Supreme Court on Monday mooted constituting an expert committee for conducting a "complete and comprehensive" study on the carrying capacity of the Himalayan region in the country, where unplanned development has caused devastation in recent times, terming it a "very important issue".
The district magistrate said that a central team will survey the damage to properties due to the land subsidence and suggest a way forward while coordinating with the local administration in relief and rescue efforts.
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