A landslide on the Kedarnath route in Uttarakhand killed two pilgrims and injured six, while heavy rain led to the temporary suspension of the Char Dham and Hemkund Sahib pilgrimages.
The vehicle -- a tempo traveller -- met with the accident near the Gholthir village on the Badrinath National Highway between Rudraprayag and Gauchar, they said.
According to a statement from the Rudraprayag police, the landslide was triggered by continuous heavy rainfall, which caused large amounts of debris and stones to fall onto the trekking route, blocking and damaging the walkway to Kedarnath Dham.
After chairing an emergency meeting with senior officials to discuss the situation, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said that heli services on the Char Dham route will remain suspended for two days, as the weather is bad and the safety of the passengers is the government's top priority.
Five pilgrims and a pilot onboard a helicopter had a narrow escape when the aircraft on its way to Kedarnath made an emergency landing on the highway in Rudraprayag district on Saturday after developing a technical snag during take-off, officials said.
Soon after the crash on Sunday, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami held an emergency meeting and asked senior officials to prepare a strict SOP (standard operating procedure) for heli services in the state, making a thorough check of the technical condition of the choppers mandatory.
Rudraprayag District Disaster Management Officer Nandan Singh Rajwar told PTI that the accident took place above the forests of Gaurikund amid poor visibility due to bad weather.
A snag-hit helicopter being towed to Gauchar for repairs by an MI-17 chopper of the Indian Air Force crashed in the hills near Kedarnath on Saturday morning.
The counting of votes for the bypolls to 46 assembly seats in 13 states and in the Lok Sabha segments of Nanded in Maharashtra and Wayanad in Kerala, a crucial electoral exercise since the parliamentary polls in April-May, will begin at 8 am on Saturday.
An average voter turnout of 20 per cent was recorded in the first four hours of voting in the bypolls to 15 assembly seats spread across Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Kerala and Uttarakhand on Wednesday amid an incident of stone pelting in a village in UP's Meerapur and allegations of police personnel deterring voters from casting their ballot.
Nagnyal said 26 people were in the vehicle and most of them were residents of Delhi. Ten people died in the accident, the IG said.
Twelve people, including three of a family, were killed and six injured in heavy overnight rains that triggered flooding and house collapse as several rivers swelled in Uttarakhand, officials said on Thursday.
People in the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand say the Agnipath military recruitment scheme and the Ankita Bhandari murder case will have a bearing on the electoral prospects of the Bharatiya Janata Party here as these issues weigh heavy on the minds of the electorate.
As many as 849 houses in Joshimath have developed cracks following land subsidence there and 258 families have been evacuated to temporary relief centres, officials said.
The weather office has forecast intense spells of rain at isolated places in Nainital, Champawat, Pithoragarh, Bageshwar, Dehradun, Tehri and Pauri districts on Sunday.
Snowfall and rain hit the Char Dham Yatra on Tuesday with thousands of pilgrims halted en route to Kedarnath and Yamunotri temples in the Garhwal Himalayas as a precautionary measure.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered prayers at the famous Kedarnath temple in Uttarakhand's Rudraprayag district on Friday.
There were no reports of loss of property or life.
Heavy overnight rains across Uttarakhand on Monday led to a rise in the levels of most water bodies, including the Bhagirathi River and the Tehri Lake.
The famous Manikarnika Temple on the banks of Bhagirathi was swept away by the swirling waters of the river in the wee hours on Friday even as fresh attempts were launched to trace Almora Sub-Divisional Magistrate Ajay Arora, who slipped off a makeshift bridge and fell into the Mandakini river.
Search and rescue operations in Kedarnath and surrounding areas is over for all practical purposes, officials said in Son Prayag. No more survivors have been found and defence and paramilitary personnel are now wrapping up their mission.
Nine persons were on Sunday killed and five others injured as several houses caved in following a series of cloudbursts in different areas of Uttarakhand's Rudraprayag district, taking the death toll since Friday to 47.
Bad weather returned to Uttarakhand on Monday with fresh spell of rains and landslips in the higher reaches of Chamoli and Rudraprayag districts grounding rescue operations by choppers in the state where 10,000 survivors are waiting to be evacuated.
The MeT department forecast very heavy rains over the next 48 hours in the mountainous areas of the state especially the disaster-prone Pithoragarh, Uttarkashi, Chamoli and Rudraprayag districts where torrential rains may trigger flash floods, cloudbursts and landslides asking people as well as authorities to be alert.
A large number of people are feared trapped in the debris and rescue operations have been launched, Disaster Management and Mitigation department officials in Dehrdun said citing initial reports.
Devotees were not allowed to enter inside the temple premises when Modi was offering prayers.
An investment of Rs 600-700 crore (Rs 6-7 billion) is expected in the project.
The Uttarakhand government has asked Larsen & Toubro to stop work on its 99-Mw Singoli-Bhatwari hydel project in the hilly Rudraprayag district of the state.
Abhishek Bachchan along with his actress wife Aishwarya Rai and mother Jaya Bachchan visited the Kedarnath shrine and offered prayers to Lord Shiva in Rudraprayag district of Uttarakhand on Friday.
BARC worked for nearly three years to find the source, origin, route and recharge zone of the spring.
This is not the first such incident in the region this year.
The famous Char Dham pilgrimage began on Wednesday with the reopening of the Gangotri and the Yamnotri shrines in the Garhwal Himalayas after a period of six months.
An FIR has been lodged in this regard by the temple committee officials.
Superintendent of police V P Singh said the timely intervention of police saved several lives as it managed to extricate the injured and providing them timely medical aid.
The bus was going to Maithani in Chamoli district from Srinagar (Garhwal) when it skidded off the road rolling down into a 150-meter ditch, Superintendent of Police Pushkar Singh Sailal said.
It's the time of snowball fights and snowmen in Srinagar as the Kashmiri capital witnessed its season's first snowfall on Tuesday. Check out these stunning photos of Srinagar all wrapped up in a snowy blanket.
The pilgrimage to Kedarnath was suspended on Wednesday for three days in view of the weather department's warning of heavy rains in the area and frequent blockage of roads to the Himalayan shrine following intermittent showers in the valley over the past few days.
Journeys from the mountains to the temples.
Authorities in Chamoli district said the toll may climb as about 50 persons from different villages in the area are missing and rescue operations are on.
Swollen waters of the Bhagirathi following incessant overnight rains washed away a famous Shiva temple in Uttarkashi on Friday even as the state government set September 11 as the date for resumption of regular prayers at Kedarnath temple,which were suspended after the June calamity.
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