Joshimath residents demand proactive resettlement steps by government

A 350-metre wide strip of land has been affected by the sinking or land subsidence phenomenon, Uttarakhand Chief Secretary tells PMO review meeting; NDMA members to visit Joshimath today

Residents of Joshimath, the Himalayan pilgrim town that appears to be sinking, are blaming major power and road infrastructure projects for their plight and are demanding that the government resettle and give new homes for all those who have lost their properties in the town where they had invested their life savings. The members of the National Disaster Management Authority are set to visit the town on Monday to assess the situation and advise the State government.

A day after Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami visited the town, which is experiencing land subsidence -- the technical term for the sinking phenomenon -- residents continued their protest at the tehsil headquarters on Sunday, blaming the National Thermal Power Corporation’s (NTPC) Tapovan-Vishnugad power project for the ‘irreversible’ damage to the sacred town.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) convened a high level review of the situation in Delhi on Sunday, attended by State and Central officials, and scientific experts in geology and disaster management. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also held discussions with Mr. Dhami about the situation.

According to an official statement from the PMO, Uttarakhand Chief Secretary S.S. Sandhu informed the review meeting that after a ground-level assessment, it has been determined that a strip of land with a width of around 350 metres has been affected. The PM’s Principal Secretary, P.K. Mishra, stressed that the immediate priorities for the State should be the safety of people living in the affected area. A National Disaster Response Force and four State forces have reached Joshimath, where the district administration is working with affected families to evacuate and relocate them to safer places with adequate arrangements for food, shelter and security, said the statement.

Atul Sati, convener of the Joshimath Bachao Sangharsh Samiti which is leading the residents’ protest, said that the government had only stopped the development project when the town was on the brink of disaster. “We had warned years back that NTPC’s work is going to get this town to sink. No one paid heed. Look at the situation of Joshimath now,” he added.

Putting equal onus on the construction of the Helang-Marwari bypass by the Border Roads Organisation, Dinesh Chaudhary, a shopkeeper in Sunil village of the Joshimath region, said that merely halting the projects will not help. “The government must put a full stop on the NTPC and BRO projects. Only then Joshimath will be saved,” he added.

The residents of Joshimath, also known as the gateway town to the Badrinath temple, said that they have been complaining to the government about cracks in their houses for over a year now. However, the administration has become active only after its own building started developing cracks. In fact, the cracks in Joshimath are not confined to just homes and buildings anymore; even the roads and rocks on the trekking routes have visible fractures.