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.
Rescue work at the collapsed Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand was virtually on hold Sunday as the agencies involved in the effort set themselves up for the next stage -- adopting multiple approaches to reach the 41 men trapped inside for a week.
There are wild rumours not just in Uttarakhand but all over the country about the actual damage done by excessive rains, cloud bursts and landslides in the state.
With questions being raised whether large-scale deaths in Uttarkhand could have been averted, the MeT department today said it had issued "timely" warnings of heavy rains and landslides while the state government claimed there was not enough prior indication of a "crisis of this magnitude".
To avert another Uttarakhand-type catastrophe, we must change course. We should stop pandering to the Indian elite's insatiable appetite for electricity, which is driving reckless dam construction, says Praful Bidwai
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