The Uttarakhand government has advised travellers, a majority of whom are on religious trips in the month of Shravan, to travel only if it is urgent after experts identified 20 landslide and 11 land-subsidence zones along the Rishikesh-Badrinath Highway.

A 100sqm stretch of the highway is gradually sinking near the Alaknanda in Devprayag. The highway near Totaghati was closed on Saturday following massive rockfall and it could be opened after 10 hours for limited use. However, landslides in Bagwan on the same route disrupted the movement of traffic late on Saturday night.

Brijesh Bhatt, district disaster management officer, told reporters that the travellers were requested to take the alternative routes between Rishikesh and Srinagar.

"Even those devotees who were going on foot didn’t have space to move ahead on the highway. They, along with the vehicles that were stranded for many hours, were sent to Srinagar via Khadi, Gaja and Devprayag," Bhatt said.

“The experts have identified 20 landslide and 11 land-subsidence zones on this route and advised the travellers to venture on this road when it was very urgent. The situation may worsen anytime because of heavy rainfall. It is dangerous to travel there, he added.

He said repair work was undertaken on the stretch of the highway between Pursadi and Maithana five years ago but the landslide has once again started there.

The repair work in the hills mostly included putting heavy boulders between the rocks and the roads to prevent any freefall of heavy rocks. In the plains, land was dug up and filled with stones and sand to prevent them from sinking further.

An official who didn’t want to be named said: “The problem on the Rishikesh-Badrinath Highway started when the government decided to deploy heavy equipment to build an all-weather road. For this, the PWD and the National Highways Authority of India were cutting the hills mindlessly. As a result, the dormant landslide zones became active. The government will never accept it.”