Around 1,000 devotees will be allowed to visit Kedarnath shrine daily when its portals are opened on May 4, Chief Minister Harish Rawat said and sought to allay safety concerns of pilgrims.
The mercury soared to 46.2 degrees Celsius at Najafgarh, making it the hottest place in the capital.
The massive flood in the Dhauli Ganga river triggered by a glacial burst in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district on Sunday came as a grim reminder of the Kedarnath deluge of 2013 which led to widespread devastation in the ecologically fragile Himalayan region.
Mercury hovered around 40 degrees Celsius in large parts of the country on Monday as the Indian meteorological department predicted heat wave conditions in parts of east India over the next four days and the northwest region over the next two days.
Bankura continued to top the maximum temperature chart at 43.7 degrees Celsius, while Panagarh in Paschim Bardhaman district followed closely at 43.5 degrees Celsius, the weather office said.
Disaster in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh can be blamed on myopic industrialisation, urbanisation and tourism policies.
With the fresh fatalities, the total number of people losing their lives in this year's flood and landslides across the state has gone up to 42.
'This is probably why the late General Bipin Rawat, who hails from the Garhwal Himalaya, said that the existing roads are fine with the army.'
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday conducted an aerial survey of rain-ravaged areas of Uttarakhand to asses the damage which the state government has pegged at Rs 7,000 crore.
The Northern Railways said it has cancelled around 17 trains and diverted around 12 others, while traffic has been suspended at four locations due to waterlogging.
Ashok Tripathi, 54, who ran a company in Odisha, and Vaibhavi Bandekar Tripathi, 51, who worked in a firm at Bandra-Kurla Complex in neighbouring Mumbai, had separated following court orders, an official from Kapurbawdi police station in Thane said on Monday.
The Indian Air Force flew 12 sorties to bring back Indian nationals, including many children.
A powerful 5.9-magnitude earthquake jolted a mountainous part of Pakistan's Balochistan province early on Thursday, resulting in collapse of several houses that left at least 22 people dead and over 300 others injured, officials said.
Modi said he was at a loss of words to describe what he felt while he was sitting before the statue.
'Cracks continue to appear in more and more houses.' 'We believe the government is not going to tell us the truth.'
Headed by additional secretary in the Home Ministry, B K Prasad, the team will also monitor the evacuation of stranded Indians in Nepal.
The helicopter is fitted with a self-defence system against heat seeker missiles, heavily-armoured cockpit, vital systems and components.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed anguish at the loss of lives in Uttarakhand and noted that rescue operations are underway to help the affected.
Using drones and remote-sensing equipment, rescue teams intensified efforts on Wednesday to reach the 25-35 men trapped in a sludge-choked tunnel since the Uttarakhand glacier disaster three days ago and more than 170 remained missing, hopes of finding them alive fading with every passing hour.
Gadgil and the report prepared by the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) headed by him are back in news after over two dozen people lost their lives in landslides and flash floods in the past few days in the hilly regions of Western Ghats in central Kerala districts of Kottayam and Idukki.
The Centre on Thursday told the Supreme Court that if the Army cannot move its missile launchers, heavy machinery up to the northern Indo-China border, then how will it defend it and fight a war, if it breaks out.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan has said that searching for tourists/pilgrims at various shrines in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand was one of the most complex jobs ever undertaken by his team.
'We need an early warning system in India.'
The strategic 900-km-long Chardham project worth Rs 12,000 crore aims to provide all-weather connectivity to four holy towns -- Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath, and Badrinath -- in Uttarakhand.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi took stock of the damage caused by the earthquake in eastern India and has spoken to the chief ministers of Bihar, Assam and Sikkim, government sources said.
The IPCC has blamed man-made emissions for warming of the globe and long term climate change. Limiting climate change, therefore, will require substantial and sustained reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This is the message to politicians and policy makers of the world, says Dinesh C Sharma
Ten teams of the NDRF have begun full-fledged relief and rescue operations on the third day of the disaster in quake-hit Nepal.
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.
A 13.2 MW small hydro project on the Rishiganga river was swept away in the glacier burst in Uttarakhand on Sunday, but there is no danger of floods in the downstream areas as the water level has been contained.
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Friday visited the Nepal embassy in New Delhi to pay condolences to those who died in the killer earthquake in the neighbouring country.
Whether it is the blunder over the glaciers or the linking of natural disasters to global warming, the IPCC's credibility has been badly hit. If this encourages laxity over global warming, that will be tragic.
More than 39.8 lakh people in 27 of the 33 districts in the state were affected by the deluge on Thursday.
Indian Air Force's C-130 J Super Hercules aircraft on Saturday took off from the Hindon airbase in New Delhi carrying National Disaster Relief Force personnel and relief material to Nepal in the wake of the devastating earthquake that has hit the Himalayan country.
'When Covid first struck, the lockdown resulted in clean air in major Indian cities.' 'You were able to see the Himalayan range from Ludhiana.' 'In Delhi, you were seeing deer and stags all over the city because there was no traffic.' 'It was incredible. Nature was waiting to come back.'
Scanty rainfall, last year's lockdown, growing competition from Nepal and the disaster of the 2017 Gorkhaland agitation are steadily weakening exports and sales of Darjeeling tea.
'It was more than ego.' 'It carried with it a sincere belief that he was the quintessence of the country, that the country's destiny was irrevocably intertwined with his destiny.' An excerpt from T J S George's The Dismantling of India: In 35 Portraits.
Telecom operators slash call rates to quake-hit Nepal
India on Wednesday said it is focusing on Nepal's capital Kathmandu and the worst-affected Gorkha district for its rescue and relief efforts in the quake-hit country.
'Events like the one we saw on Sunday are complex geological processes which can be impacted by weather and climatic conditions.' 'It is difficult to attribute something like this to just one factor or to a particular time period, especially when we have still not understood the exact cause.'
Extensive anthropogenic interference, as part of developmental activities, is a significant factor that increases this hazard manifold. As a result, the landscape in the Himalayan, north-eastern regions and many other regions of India are highly susceptible to reoccurrence of landslides, says Dr Nitish Priyadarshi.
