A loco train carrying workers for tunnel excavation during the night shift was about two kilometres inside the tunnel when another loco train coming from the opposite direction lost control and collided with it.
It is clarified that the tunnel constructed by NTPC is not passing under Joshimath town, the NTPC said.
From the numerous small and big shops in the main markets to the residential properties, vehicles, and billboards, posters with the slogan 'NTPC go back' have come up around the town in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district over the past few days.
The construction work of 4x130 MW Tapovan Vishnugad project started in November 2006. The project includes the construction of a concrete barrage at Tapovan (15 km upstream of Joshimath town).
The protesters demonstrated against the NTPC's Tapovan Vishnugad Hydroelectric Project which was being constructed in the area.
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
Talking to PTI, he said the development works should be implemented by protecting the lives of the people.
Besides, 28 human limbs have also been recovered from different places in the affected area out of which one has been identified. Thirty-three bodies out of the 62 recovered so far have also been identified, police said, adding the DNAs of unidentified bodies are being preserved.
Amid protests by a group of residents in Joshimath, the Chamoli administration on Thursday put a ban on all construction activities in and around the 'sinking' town even as nearly 50 families staying in houses at risk have been evacuated so far.
In a letter to the chief secretary, government of Uttarakhand, Union Power Secretary Alok Kumar said the land subsidence in Joshimath was a very old issue, dating back to 1976, and the construction of the 4x130 megawatt Tapovan Vishnugad project started only in 2006 by NTPC.
'All hydropower projects in the Himalayan region must be stopped.' 'Joshimath is not alone.'
Search operation at the project site has been underway on a war footing basis for a fortnight since it bore the brunt of an avalanche triggered by a glacier burst over Rishi Ganga in Chamoli district on February 7.
The Joshimath Bachao Sangharsh Samiti had given the call for the rally to press for demands of permanent rehabilitation and compensation to affected families.
A total of 800 people, belonging to 237 families, have so far been shifted to safety by the district administration
Located on Badrinath National Highway (NH-58), residents of Selang said they are scared and the Joshimath crisis has only deepened their fears.
Each disaster has the same message: Learn to respect the mountains before you build tunnels, roads, and houses, notes Sunita Narain.
Three more bodies were recovered from the National Thermal Power Corporation's flood-ravaged Tapovan-Vishnugad hydel project site on Saturday taking the toll in the February 7 glacial disaster in Uttarakhand to 65, officials said.
It is a 165 MW run-of-the-river scheme proposed in Dhauli Ganga river in Darma valley.
'The entire public needs to be evacuated immediately. Any day, the entire town can collapse.'
The NRSC satellite imagery revealed that the lake covered approximately 162.7 hectares. Its area increased to 167.4 hectares on September 28 but drastically reduced to 60.3 hectares.
Microsoft's Indian-origin CEO Satya Nadella, in communication with employees, said the company will align its cost structure with revenue and customer demand.
'Cracks continue to appear in more and more houses.' 'We believe the government is not going to tell us the truth.'
'The Himalayas are the Creator of Life.'
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said saving lives and extending all help to the families of the deceased is the state government's priority.
They said rampant infrastructure development without a plan is making the fragile Himalayan ecosystem even more vulnerable to the effects of climate change which acts as a force-multiplier.
The families of workers missing from the Rishiganga hydel project site created a ruckus in Raini on Wednesday accusing the authorities of not carrying out the rescue operations properly after the sudden flood in the Alaknanda river system wreaked havoc.
While rescue efforts are on in full swing, the narrow tunnel and the massive slush that was brought down by the glacial flood are hampering rescue operations, confirm Swati Bhadauria, the district collector of Chamoli, and Yashwant Singh Chauhan, the superintendent of police.
The death toll from the Uttarakhand glacier disaster rose to 31 with five more bodies being recovered, officials said on Tuesday as multiple agencies raced against time to reach about 30 workers trapped inside a tunnel in a power project site and 175 people remained missing.
'The present government swears by Hinduism. But we lost three of our sants during earlier BJP regimes.'
'There were literally thousands of houses with cracks.' '40 percent of the town has been affected.'
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.
Officials said 13 more families living in houses with huge cracks were moved by the administration to safe locations on Sunday.
Rescue teams on Sunday recovered 13 more bodies, including the first ones to be pulled out from the sludge-choked Tapovan tunnel where a massive operation to reach about 30 people trapped inside began after a flash flood in Chamoli district a week ago.
'Joro shoro se rescue operation chal raha hai.'
It stands at a distance watching soundlessly as multiple teams work to reach those buried under mounds of debris and is sometimes heard breaking into howls of anguish -- a canine sentinel watching the rescue mission in its search for its missing puppies.
The focal point of the multi-agency rescue operation for the last over four days remains the more-than-1.5-km-long "head-race tunnel" of the total 2.5 km of the tubular structure, as every passing minute is mounting concerns over the safety of those trapped inside.
The water level of the Dhauli Ganga river at Joshimath flowed at a perilously high level, breaching all records, Central Water Commission officials said after a part of Nanda Devi glacier broke off in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district leading to massive floods.
The move to declare those who continue to be missing in the flash flood as presumed dead has been initiated to expedite the process of distribution of compensation among the affected families, he said.
Three more bodies were recovered Monday from the Tapovan tunnel, taking the toll in the Uttarakhand flash flood to 54 as hopes of finding survivors there over a week after the disaster dimmed.
As bodies are being continually pulled out of the muck-filled power project tunnel in Tapovan, the atmosphere outside is getting grimmer with families of the missing people losing hope of seeing them alive.
