Chamoli: Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Saturday got emotional while meeting the affected families at Joshimath town of the state's Chamoli district.
CM Dhami met people across the ages, from old ones to children to have a first-hand account of their problems.
He said, "Our effort is to make everyone safe. Preparations are made for necessary arrangements. Our first task is to take people to safer areas."
CM Dhami also said, "We are also contemplating if people need to be migrated from here and rehabilitated. We are also finding out a location for this. As of now, this is the winter season. So, we are looking into the issues that need to be addressed immediately."
The Chief Minister informed that leading institutes like IIT Roorkee and others are in talks with the ISRO to find out the cause.
"Geoscientists are working. Apart from Guwahati institute, IIT Roorkee is also in talks with ISRO. Everyone is trying to find out the causes."
In Joshimath town, huge cracks have been seen in houses, roads, and fields and many houses have suffered subsidence. Cracks have been found at several places on the Joshimath-Malari border road, which connects the India-China border, due to landslides in Joshimath. A large part of the Badrinath National Highway is also in the grip of landslides.
Joshimath Municipal Chairman Shailendra Pawar said huge cracks appeared in the houses due to water leakage from inside the ground in the Marwadi ward.
The central government on Friday set up a panel to conduct a study of the occurrence of land subsidence and its impact on Joshimath town.
District Magistrate Himanshu Khurana said that all construction work has been halted in view of the situation in Joshimath until further orders.
According to the Chamoli district administration statement on Friday, out of 561 establishments, 153 in the Ravigram ward, 127 in the Gandhinagar ward, 28 in the Marwadi ward, 24 in the Lower Bazaar ward, 52 in the Singhdhar ward, 71 in the Manohar Bagh ward, 29 in the Upper Bazaar ward 27 in the Sunil ward and 50 in Parsari have reported cracks, due to which the operations of Hotel View and Malari Inn were restricted under the Disaster Management Act, 2005, till further orders.
On Thursday, nine families were displaced, including four families in Joshimath Municipal Corporation, one from Gurudwara Joshimath, one from Tourist Hostel, Manohar Bagh and others.
Locals of Joshimath had blocked the Badrinath Highway on Thursday morning to protest and get the government and administration to take the matter of land subsidence seriously.
A total of 38 families have been displaced so far.
Meanwhile, with the continuous land subsidence in the Joshimath, the state government has dispatched a team of experts to the area to assess the situation. The teams from National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) have also been deployed in the area as a precautionary measure, Chamoli Chief Development Officer (CDO) Lalit Narayan Mishra said on Friday. —ANI