NEW DELHI: While the Uttarakhand administration is shifting people from Joshimath town to safer areas, the Indian Army has also been sounded out and told to be ready. This is in addition to one team of the National Disaster Relief Force and four teams of the State Disaster Relief Force already being on the ground there.
There has been noticeable subsidence of land in town for a fortnight leading to cracks in the houses. Sources said the Army has been put on "stand by."
Joshimath is important as it is only around 100 kilometres from the Line of Actual Control with China. The area has also a sizeable presence of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police.
Other sources highlighted the use of "silent explosives by the construction workers" to avoid the attention of authorities. "This has accentuated the problem," they said.
"The cracks seen on the ground are dotted on an arc, moving north to south and the water emerging out of the cracks is dirty," the sources said.
"The major cracks have gradually appeared in the last 15 days but it had begun after the flash floods in Raini Village of Chamoli district in February 2021," they added.
The town, experts have been highlighting, is perched on an ecologically fragile area (raised on moraine - material left behind by glaciers).
"Poor town planning and construction activities have brought on this crisis," the sources stressed.
Many on the ground have also called for the complete stoppage of NTPC's Tapovan-Vishnugad project and the construction of the Helang-Marwari bypass, both of which are seen as culprits by the Joshimath Bachao Sangharsh Samiti.
Three zones have been formed by the government -- the danger zone, where immediate evacuation is needed; the buffer zone, the area that can unsafe soon, and the safe zone.
A team from Central Building Research Institute reached Joshimath to analyse the damages caused to buildings for compensation, ANI reported.
The news of the Army being placed on stand-by comes on a day when environmentalist Chandi Prasad Bhatt, associated with the Chipko Movement, was quoted as saying that in a report submitted to the Uttarkhand government in 2001 had warned of the lurking dangers.
Over 99 per cent of the mapped area had been shown as landslide-prone in varying degrees, Bhatt told PTI, adding 39 per cent of the area was identified as a high-risk zone, 28 per cent as a moderate-risk zone and 29 per cent as a low-risk zone and the rest in the lowest.
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