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‘The Folks of Uttarakhand and Himachal Need Roads, Not Landslides’

Tanvi Deshpande

[This year, the onset of monsoon in India was under unusual circumstances. The country saw its highest ever rainfall in the month of May. The official onset of monsoon was declared over the hill states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand around June 20 and monsoon covered the entire country by June 29. Right from the start, rains wreaked havoc in Himachal Pradesh. By July 17, the state had recorded more than 100 deaths and losses worth more than Rs 800 crore due to heavy rainfall and landslides. Many districts including Mandi, Kullu and Shimla were affected.

On August 5, a disaster in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi area led to widespread destruction. A first landslide or mudslide occurred in Dharali village, followed by another in Harsil, about 6 km away. Videos showed many structures along a riverbed being washed away by a river of debris that came crashing down a hill in Dharali and a similar flood in an army camp in Harsil. While initially reports claimed the cause to be a cloudburst, experts have pointed out that the reason could be a glacier breach or avalanche as well.

India is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change which makes our annual monsoon more erratic. Climate change is expected to increase the frequency of extreme weather events like heavy rainfall and Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOFs). Coupled with poor planning, inadequate mitigation measures and disaster preparedness, unplanned urbanisation and deforestation, it is leading to never-seen-before disasters in India’s Himalayan states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

Ravi Chopra is a respected environmentalist working on the Himalayas in India. He has been advocating conservation, better planning of infrastructure projects, and community participation in the hill states for about 40 years now. An engineer by profession, he was also the director of the People’s Science Institute, a nonprofit public interest research organisation that serves the needs of rural populations.

In 2019, Chopra was appointed as chairperson of a “high-powered committee” created by the Supreme Court to review the Char Dham project, which aims to provide year-round accessibility to Uttarakhand’s four major Hindu pilgrimage sites: Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunotri and Gangotri. Chopra had resigned three years later from the committee, stating that his belief that the panel could protect the fragile ecology of the Himalayas “has been shattered”.

The ecological concerns he had been voicing for years were proven correct when the Silkyara tunnel, part of the Char Dham project, collapsed in 2023 endangering the lives of 40 labourers trapped inside.

In an interview with IndiaSpend conducted before and after the Dharali disaster, Chopra spoke extensively on the increasing disasters in these hill states, how the government disregarded its own notes of caution, how people don’t want foolhardy development and why tourism needs to be regulated. Edited excerpts follow.]

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Tanvi Deshpande: Within the case of the catastrophe in Uttarakhand’s Dharali on August 5, the movies present that the buildings that obtained affected have been constructed very near the river. Whereas it is a rural space, somebody should have given permission?

Ravi Chopra: Sure. The village of Dharali is larger up and much from this location. The nationwide freeway passes from close to the riverbank. These have been the accommodations, homestays, lodges that have been constructed across the highway in order that these are simply accessible. Sadly, they have been additionally mendacity on the tail-end of the particles of older avalanches. It’s most definitely that the fabric [soil] just isn’t consolidated, it’s free materials that may be washed away in a flood. Whoever gave permission to assemble right here must be held accountable.

Each Himalayan states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand are seeing floods for the reason that onset of monsoon. The variety of landslides and land subsidence can also be growing. The Himalayas are a younger vary, however are there elements past the geographical and geological for these growing disasters? In your commentary, what’s making this sort of destruction widespread each monsoon?

Each these states are a part of the central western Himalayan vary. These ranges are geologically younger. The oldest vary of the Himalayas is a couple of most of 60 million years outdated. They seem like large mighty mountains, however once you get shut, you may see that they’re disjointed, fractured ranges they usually have fissures in them. Any try and disturb the secure slopes needs to be achieved extraordinarily rigorously.

Within the final 5 to eight years, there was an enormous push by the federal government of India to construct infrastructure in these areas. Again in 2012, the federal government of India introduced a brand new nationwide highways coverage during which it was mandated that every one the nationwide highways could be two-lane or 10 metres huge and could have a blacktop floor. What which means is that the highway is definitely about 13 metres huge as a result of they’ve to chop 1.5 metres for having crash limitations on both facet.

Now, there’s a normal rule that one mustn’t minimize slopes which have an incline of greater than 30 levels. However the Nationwide Freeway Authority of India and its contractors have been ignoring this. Again in March 2018, the Ministry of Street Transport and Highways put out a notification which clearly mentioned that the expertise of the earlier years had proven that it isn’t straightforward to construct huge roads within the mountain areas. That there had been lots of deforestation, that there had been landslides and lots of injury. All this was identified, analysis was achieved, this was a notification that was developed consequently. However then within the zeal to develop these roads and notably take massive numbers of pilgrims in Uttarakhand to the 4 shrines, the Char Dham, they merely ignored such norms and constraints. This notification was by no means revealed both to the courts and even when the high-powered committee on Char Dham Pariyojana was arrange, of which I used to be the chairperson. They didn’t adhere to it and later they modified that notification.

Second, if you will construct such huge roads, then it’s a must to undertake excellent prior geological investigations. When our high-powered committee toured this space, we discovered that the geological investigations have been insufficient and we noticed a number of proof of slopes on the verge of sliding or landslides having taken place. The safety partitions are insufficient and generally poorly constructed.

Within the case of Himachal, there’s one other catastrophe. In Himachal, they’ve constructed roads alongside the rivers. Earlier than Independence, roads have been by no means constructed within the valleys in each Himachal and Uttarakhand however relatively constructed on the highest. When there’s a flood within the river, the erosive power of the flood water is so excessive that it sweeps away the man-made roads and different buildings [downstream, in the valley].

So, these are the first causes: insufficient geological investigations, very sharp slopes going as much as 60-70 levels, the roads being too huge and roads proper by the riverside. Apart from, there may be lots of deforestation that takes place and successfully, many of those slopes are left unprotected.

TD: Even within the case of Dharali, you wrote that this was a warning ignored. What made you say that?

RC: Sure, it’s a warning unheard. I’ve written about numerous experiences which have been ignored up to now. On this particular case, once we went to the area through the HPC’s fieldwork, geologist Dr Navin Juyal identified these hanging glaciers on the time and mentioned that this space is topic to repeated avalanches and that the slope itself is fabricated from particles of previous avalanches. Subsequently, this isn’t a really secure space.

Additionally, you shouldn’t be widening roads by slicing deodar bushes that minimise injury to slopes. And but, the federal government is planning to widen the nationwide freeway to Gangotri by 10 toes by slicing 6,000 bushes.

On August 5, the incident occurred round 1.30 p.m. Folks on their manner as much as Gangotri or these descending usually cease at Dharali for lunch. I used to be advised that apart from vacationers, there have been lots of labourers from Bihar working there and from Nepal additionally, who had come for apple selecting. These individuals won’t ever get accounted for. Subsequently, I feel the variety of useless is definitely a lot larger than what we all know, in all probability 100 or 200.

TD: Many districts of Himachal and Uttarakhand are landslide susceptible. Even then, is landslide zonation and mapping poor? Are landslides and land subsidence occurring in new spots and authorities getting caught off guard?

RC: There’s an atlas known as Landslide Hazard Zonation Mapping within the Himalayas of Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh utilizing distant sensing and GIS methods. This atlas has been put out by the Nationwide Distant Sensing Company in 2001. Mapping just isn’t poor. The analysis is completed. The info, the maps are put out and no one appears to be like at them. It lies on the cabinets of the choice makers.

TD: You spoke about roads being too huge or being constructed proper subsequent to the riverside. However each these states have an growing inhabitants and due to this fact improvement wants. Are these states failing to stability their improvement wants with the geological actuality, which is that rainfall is growing and landslides are growing?

RC: My grandmother used to say, in case you comply with the legal guidelines of nature, you should have a cheerful life. These individuals are not prepared to respect the prevailing pure situations. They know that slopes which are steeper than 30 levels shouldn’t be minimize. That is acknowledged by their very own engineers and researchers. So, if you will ignore the constraints of nature, you might be merely inviting catastrophe. The individuals of neither state need foolhardy improvement. They need sustainable improvement. They need roads, they don’t need landslides.

TD: Information present that each the states have seen new roads and bridges price 1000’s of kilometres being laid or below building in recent times. What influence does using asphalt and concrete have on the percolation of rainwater within the floor? Does that erode slopes?

RC: The form of geological investigations which are required are usually not achieved as a result of roadwork contractors, engineers and the federal government have to satisfy a focused date. Fairly often, the focused date is set by the subsequent election and so they’re in a rush to indicate the general public, look we’re doing such nice issues for you.

TD: The individuals of Joshimath had been complaining of cracks of their houses for some time earlier than the precise subsidence occurred. Are you seeing anger on the bottom as a result of you’ve lived on this area for thus lengthy? What’s the sense among the many individuals?

RC: When you ask me, there’s a entire class of people who find themselves benefitting from this sort of improvement. These embrace center class, higher center class and rich individuals. They’re thrilled that, you already know, I can go to Badrinath and are available again in three days at most. Our native Uttarakhand and Himachal center class additionally feels fairly glad that our state is progressing, that the economic system of the state is rising. However even these individuals, when their home collapses, then they arrive to their senses. The true scenario is that in Uttarakhand individuals are disheartened. They’ve been witnessing disasters since 2013. Disasters in Himachal Pradesh are newer.

The slopes are sliding in a number of locations. Once we journey within the mountains, the bushes are usually not standing straight up. They’re at an angle to the slope as a result of that slope has slid earlier. In technical language, this is called a ‘creep’. So the slope is creeping step by step. That is the primary signal that this slope is in bother. Now it’s a must to be very cautious right here. However a developer will get permission to place up a constructing or one thing right here. They only go minimize the forest, minimize the slope, make the house, put up the buildings and invite catastrophe.

After the Indo-China border conflict, the federal government rightly determined that we would have liked to construct motorable roads on this space that would take troops and army gear proper as much as the Indo-China border. So that they constructed a highway and that’s when the native administration observed that there have been fissures within the floor in Joshimath. This was way back to 1976. The UP authorities of that point appointed a committee. They proposed a lot of measures to stop additional injury. So, the report comes out in 1976, no motion was ever taken. Not a single certainly one of these suggestions was ever adopted. No one rejected them, however the authorities didn’t do something both.

TD: The pressures of improvement are additionally resulting in massive scale deforestation in each the states.

RC: Huge deforestation is being achieved and that is in an period of local weather change. The entire world is screaming that we’d like extra bushes. Even our personal politicians, these individuals with forked tongues, all of them speak about planting extra bushes…. However we find yourself with deforested, massively denuded areas at a time once we desperately want extra bushes to soak up all that carbon dioxide that we maintain growing.

TD: Do you assume that tourism ought to be regulated in these two states now? Lately there was a regulation on the variety of vacationers that may enter Mussoorie.

RC: Tourism was all the time regulated within the mountain areas. It’s solely in recent times that we’ve got deserted the rules. The forest division had put in restrictions on the variety of individuals and ponies that would go to the stretch from Gangotri to Gaumukh, which is about 19 km, after many vacationers began going there 20 years in the past. I bear in mind you would not take a automobile contained in the Mall Street of Mussoorie within the Nineteen Nineties. We’ve had these guidelines. This authorities is an anti-environment, anti-people authorities. It doesn’t respect any guidelines of nature, it doesn’t respect human life, neglect about wildlife.

In Uttarakhand and Himachal each, there are literally thousands of spots the place individuals can come and revel in nature. However that enjoyment will solely final so long as nature stays pristine. When you destroy nature, then individuals will cease coming. So, you might be killing the golden goose. And entry to unexplored areas should be extraordinarily tightly regulated.

TD: When the federal government broke down the Char Dham mission into particular person highway packages or contracts to bypass having to do an setting influence evaluation, do you assume that set the precedent for the remainder of the nation?

RC: On this case, the federal government was brazenly perpetrating a fraud. It was a fraudulent train. The environmentalists confirmed the courtroom that if we put these 53 tasks collectively, it provides as much as the complete Char Dham mission of 900 kilometres. And but, the courtroom didn’t come down on this sort of fraud. So, I blame the courts additionally for being cowards.

TD: In 2023, the Supreme Courtroom had mentioned that it was going to kind a excessive profile committee to evaluate the carrying capability of Himalayan states. This was in reference to overcrowding due to tourism in all 13 Himalayan states, however nothing appears to have moved after that. Equally, NGT had shaped a committee to verify if larger Himalayas may be declared an eco-sensitive zone however the committee deferred the identical. Had been each these misplaced alternatives?

RC: The courts can solely concern orders. Who’s going to execute them? It’s the manager that has to execute any order or any regulation framed by the courtroom. The manager is reluctant to do these items. The cash foyer, the contractor foyer, are simply too sturdy. And the most effective instance I can provide you is the Madhav Gadgil committee that was shaped for figuring out the carrying capability of the Western Ghats. They got here out with a implausible report. And what did the federal government do? They shaped one other committee to overview it. Then the state governments of Kerala, Karnataka and Goa began objecting to it. The cash lobbies are simply too highly effective. Folks’s actions don’t occur in a single day.

I led one other Supreme Courtroom nominated committee in 2013. We reviewed the influence of hydropower tasks in Uttarakhand and we supported the view of the Nationwide River Ganga Basin Authority. It mentioned that the stretch from Uttarkashi as much as Gangotri ought to be declared as an eco-sensitive zone and a no-go space for giant improvement tasks. The Congress authorities of that point proceeded to cancel the development of three dams, certainly one of which was already below building. They gave NTPC Rs 600 crore as compensation. That’s the form of strategy we have to take.

[Tanvi Deshpande is a special correspondent (environment and climate change) at IndiaSpend. She is based in Mumbai. Courtesy: IndiaSpend, a non-profit online webportal that uses open data to inform public understanding on a range of issues, with the aim of fostering better governance and more transparency and accountability in governance.]

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Flash Flood within the Himalayas Reignites Debate on Improvement

Kavita Upadhyay

It was round 1:30 p.m. on August 5, when after constant rains, the residents of Dharali, a picturesque village in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi district, started fearing the worst: a disastrous flash flood.

Mohammad Shoaib, a 21-year-old welder from Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh, was in Dharali’s market space, ready to select up three of his co-workers in a automobile, when immediately he heard individuals from the close by Mukhba village and from Dharali, settled slightly larger up and away from the market, screaming, shouting, and whistling. They have been warning everybody under to run for his or her lives as they noticed a flash flood approaching Dharali.

Together with his co-workers nowhere in sight, Shoaib, who, amidst the screams and whistles, may additionally hear the loud rumbles and thuds of the incoming flash flood, began the automobile and sped via Dharali at about 70-80 kilometres per hour.

When he stopped and seemed again, the complete market space behind him had both been swept away within the flash flood or buried below the large quantities of sediment and boulders that Kheer Gad, or Kheer Ganga – a Himalayan stream passing via Dharali – introduced down with it. He had escaped the flood by barely a second or two.

Regardless of a number of days of post-disaster rescue efforts by the Nationwide Catastrophe Response Pressure, State Catastrophe Response Pressure, the Indian Military, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, and Uttarkashi district administration groups, just one physique had been recovered as of August 13. Based on the Dehradun-based State Emergency Operation Centre, at the very least 68 individuals stay lacking from Dharali and Harsil, a settlement about three kilometres away from Dharali, the place a military camp was broken in one other flood-related catastrophe that additionally struck on August 5, leaving 9 military personnel lacking.

The 40-60 toes of sediment and boulders deposited by the flash flood in Dharali’s market areas have made it nearly not possible to find and get better our bodies. The individuals lacking comprise Dharali residents, vacationers, and labourers, largely from Nepal, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh, of whom the bulk, 25, are Nepali labourers.

The first explanation for the flash flood continues to be unknown. Nevertheless, consultants speculate that it may have been a rock and ice avalanche, adopted by short-term damming that was later breached, which can have brought on the flood. Alternatively, a doable landslide lake outburst flood (LLOF) could have occurred. The Uttarakhand authorities initially claimed that the flood was brought on by a cloudburst, however consultants are but to verify this.

Elevated building regardless of a historical past of floods

When Sanjay Saini, a mountaineer, first set foot in Dharali in 1996, he noticed simply 4 buildings out there space that now lies buried below heaps of sediment, boulders, and rubble.

Development of homes, lodges, retailers, and accommodations in the identical space gathered tempo solely up to now 20 years, pushed by rising vacationer numbers within the space and pilgrim footfall to the Gangotri shrine, about 20 kilometres from Dharali. Resorts adopted, and some years in the past, homestays additionally began appearing.

“Historically, homes on this area have been constructed on secure slopes, away from rivers. It was nicely understood that streams within the Himalaya are usually not all the time mild. They’re highly effective and have carved out valleys over millennia,” mentioned Piyoosh Rautela, a geologist and former government director on the Uttarakhand State Catastrophe Administration Authority.

In latest instances nonetheless, settlements have come up in economically viable but unstable areas, largely alongside roads and rivers.

In June 2013, when a number of rivers in Uttarakhand have been in spate, the Kheer Gad additionally flooded. On the time, massive quantities of sediment and rocks introduced by the stream have been deposited within the Dharali market space. A couple of accommodations close to the stream have been broken, many buildings have been crammed with 5 to 10 toes of sediment, and several other vehicles have been buried below the sediment.

“Intensive flood safety works have been carried out alongside the Kheer Gad after the 2013 flood, so we thought our worries about future floods had been resolved,” mentioned 36-year-old Dharali resident Bhimraj Panwar, whose ancestral home was fully broken within the August 5 catastrophe. Put up-2013, when RCC (strengthened cement concrete) partitions have been constructed on the perimeters of the stream to guard the village from future floods, extra buildings have been constructed within the Dharali market space, Panwar mentioned.

Dharali residents recalled that they witnessed a flood in 2018 too.

Traditionally, too, the village has witnessed flooding. Kalp Kedar, a temple within the village, situated within the disaster-hit space, now lies fully buried below materials introduced down by the flood. Previously too, it was seemingly buried below particles from a flooded Kheer Gad and was partly excavated across the Eighties, mentioned a senior geologist, Navin Juyal.

“This exhibits that the realm has been experiencing the deposition of sediments from floods for a very long time,” Juyal mentioned.

Setting up on Kheer Gad’s path

On August 7, two days after the catastrophe, the Indian House Analysis Organisation’s Nationwide Distant Sensing Centre launched photos sourced via Cartosat-2S satellites. These photos present the village earlier than the catastrophe on June 13, 2024, and after the catastrophe on August 7, 2025. The photographs reveal the extent of harm within the Dharali market space following the flash flood.

Satellite tv for pc photos evaluating Dharali pre-disaster (June 13, 2024) and post-disaster (August 7, 2025)

Picture courtesy of Nationwide Distant Sensing Centre, Hyderabad.

The photographs present that the market was established on a land formed like a fan–scientifically known as a debris-flow fan– shaped through the years by sediments deposited throughout excessive, medium, and low flows within the Kheer Gad.

“Establishing a settlement on land the place the river frequently deposits sediments is precarious, because it carries the chance of a Dharali-like catastrophe,” mentioned Wolfgang Schwanghart, a geomorphologist on the College of Potsdam, Germany, who has been finding out pure hazards and disasters in Himalayan areas, together with Uttarakhand, for over a decade.

Schwanghart famous that regardless that appropriate land for settlement is scarce within the troublesome terrain of Uttarakhand Himalayas, debris-flow followers ought to be strictly prevented for building and habitation, and ought to be left undisturbed.

Manish Kumar, an ecohydrologist and local weather adaptation skilled who has labored on Himalayan hydrology, together with in Uttarakhand, for almost 20 years, described debris-flow followers as “security valves” of streams just like the Kheer Gad, which circulation via steep slopes earlier than coming into flatter areas. Kumar defined, “Setting up over these followers is like choking the stream’s security valves. The stream is sure to interrupt out and reclaim its space eventually, which is what occurred in Dharali.”

The catastrophe, Kumar mentioned, was a warning towards unrestricted improvement in delicate and sophisticated Himalayan areas.

On August 11, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami instructed officers to establish disaster-prone areas within the state and be sure that no new constructions are constructed there. He additionally gave directions to ban building close to water our bodies, corresponding to rivers and streams.

In 2013, too, when floods struck a number of components of Uttarakhand and at the very least 4,000 individuals died within the Kedarnath Valley alone, the then Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna banned building alongside river banks. Nevertheless, in actuality, a number of buildings, particularly accommodations, beside rivers that have been swept away within the floods have been rebuilt, some on the exact same spots the place they’d earlier stood. After 2013, environmental norms continued to be violated for the development of a number of massive infrastructure tasks corresponding to hydropower and nationwide highways.

Responding to Dhami’s choice to ban future building in hazard-prone areas, Ravi Chopra, a Dehradun-based environmental scientist and improvement activist, mentioned, “That is merely an government order to officers and doesn’t carry authorized weight. In reality, it has a serious lacuna – it addresses future building actions. What about present settlements like Dharali? How is the federal government planning to make sure the protection of these already dwelling in hazard-prone areas?”

Following the 2013 catastrophe, orders, together with these by the Uttarakhand Excessive Courtroom and the Nationwide Inexperienced Tribunal, have been issued to stop constructing close to rivers. Nevertheless, these orders have been additionally violated.

“What we’d like is a dedicated officialdom that can guarantee measures are taken to mitigate disasters. That dedication is often lacking,” mentioned Chopra, who, after the 2013 Uttarakhand catastrophe, headed two Supreme Courtroom-appointed committees to overview the impacts of hydropower tasks, and a mega nationwide freeway widening mission in Uttarakhand – the Char Dham Pariyojana.

Deodar felling dangers slope stability

A looming risk to Dharali and close by villages is the proposed felling of about 6,000 deodar (Himalayan cedar) bushes to widen Nationwide Freeway (NH) -34, the highway to the Gangotri shrine. These bushes stand alongside a 10-kilometre stretch between Jhala and Jangla in Uttarkashi district, which incorporates Dharali and Harsil. In the meantime, the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) has been pushing to widen the nationwide freeway at the price of felling these bushes and weakening slope stability.

Specialists warn that slicing these bushes will destabilise slopes, growing the chance of landslides. This Jhala-Jangla stretch is a part of the Char Dham Pariyojana, a Ministry of Street Transport and Highways’ (MoRTH) mission aimed toward widening 889 kilometres of nationwide highways in Uttarakhand. The mission has confronted criticism for causes together with MoRTH’s choice to divide the 889 kilometres in 53 smaller sections to keep away from environmental influence evaluation (EIA).

In 2023, MoRTH requested geologist Juyal, environmentalist Hemant Dhyani, and hydrogeologist Rajneesh Khilnani to overview the Detailed Undertaking Report (DPR) for a selected stretch of the Char Dham mission – 100 kilometres of NH-34 between Gangotri and Uttarkashi. The DPR had proposed growth of the highway to a 10-metre-wide tarred floor (known as double lane with paved shoulder, or DL-PS configuration). The consultants have been tasked with suggesting disaster-resilient alternate options that minimise slope disturbance throughout highway widening.

Their suggestions included setting up RCC partitions on the facet of the highway dealing with away from the slope, and filling them with regionally out there sediments. This strategy would assist save the bushes from being felled and maintain the slopes undisturbed.

The Jhala-Jangla phase, which lies inside the stretch that the consultants reviewed, is especially delicate. The 6,000 bushes marked for felling on this phase stand on slopes strewn with rocks and boulders, that are particles from previous avalanches.

“Bushes have the important perform of gripping these slopes with their roots, thereby maintaining these slopes secure,” Juyal mentioned.

Flood safety work achieved in Dharali after the 2013 catastrophe. Picture by particular association.

Dhyani mentioned, “Streams right here, just like the Kheer Gad, are already vulnerable to flash floods, which have broken NH-34 up to now, too. Reducing 1000’s of deodar bushes provides additional danger of the freeway being often broken by future landslides.”

Elements of NH-34 have been additionally broken through the August 5 catastrophe, delaying rescue efforts.

Additionally, the 10-kilometre stretch between Jhala and Jangla, falls inside the Bhagirathi eco-sensitive zone (BESZ), which was notified in 2012, the place building work in hazard zones, on steep slopes, and on slopes with excessive erosion is prohibited. In 2019, the Supreme Courtroom gave instructions to kind a Excessive-Powered Committee (HPC) to overview the Char Dham mission. For works in BESZ, the HPC advisable avoiding deodar felling, conducting detailed EIA, and securing essential clearances from the setting ministry.

Dhyani, who can also be an HPC member, mentioned that the BRO didn’t comply with the HPC suggestions.

The BRO’s push for slicing the 6,000 deodar bushes can also be in violation of a Supreme Courtroom judgment of December 14, 2021, relating to the Char Dham mission, which provides instructions to keep away from felling of deodar bushes.

A civil society group from Uttarkashi, ‘Himalayi Nagrik Drishti Manch’, alleges that to bypass environmental clearance, the BRO hid from the setting ministry that the Jhala-Jangla stretch lies inside BESZ. On August 19, 2024, the BRO wrote to the Uttarakhand forest division claiming that EIA and environmental clearance may not be essential.

Mongabay India emailed the BRO for his or her response relating to the alleged violations and acquired no response on the time of publishing.

In view of the August 5 catastrophe in Dharali and the necessity to preserve slope stability in and across the village, Juyal and Dhyani submitted a word to MoRTH on August 12, urging it to contemplate an alternate strategy to widening the Jhala-Jangla stretch to save lots of the 6,000 deodar bushes from being felled.

[The author is an independent journalist and researcher. Courtesy: Mongabay, a nonprofit environmental science and conservation news platform.]