The residents of Joshimath in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district have been protesting for four days against what they call “mindless damage to the earth in the name of development”, against the backdrop of subsidence fears.

The local administration on Wednesday put a temporary halt on all construction works of the National Thermal Power Corporation and the Hindustan Construction Company and wrote to the state government that many buildings, including seven-storey hotels, had been constructed against specifications. However, this has not pacified the residents as more and more roads and houses have developed cracks in the city.

“Tunnels and hydro-power projects under construction here since 2006 have posed a major threat to the residents as incidents of landslides have increased. Hundreds of houses started developing cracks on Tuesday and many roads caved in,” said Manmohan Joshi, a local.

Residents claimed that the landslides were the result of unnecessary digging of earth for the construction of a tunnel by the NTPC’s Tapovan-Vishnugarh hydro project and a bypass road between Helang and Marwadi.

The district magistrate of Chamoli, Himanshu Khurana, told reporters that he had written to the government two days ago about the illegal construction of multi-storey buildings in Joshimath and recommended legal action against them.

Official sources said the job of evacuating over 40 families from Joshimath to Chamoli town was completed on Friday, while half-a-dozen other families themselves left their homes.

The walls of hundreds of houses and the earth at over half-a-dozen places have developed cracks in Joshimath. “While the cracks in the houses are less than six inches wide, the earth has cracked by more than one foot with a dangerous depth of about 20 feet in several places,” an official said.

The BJP government had allegedly not paid attention to fears expressed by residents and was jolted out of its stupor after a large number of people organised a protest this week.

PTI

N.K. Joshi, the district disaster management officer, told reporters: “A total of 561 houses developed cracks when the earth started sinking. Evacuation work will continue as the situation is grim,” he added.

Ranjit Kumar Sinha, secretary, disaster management, said 45 families had been rehabilitated.

Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami held a meeting of senior officials in Dehradun on Friday and later said he had tasked Sinha with forming a special team of experts to recommend corrective measures.

An NTPC official said on the condition of anonymity: “The tunnel which we are constructing doesn’t pass below Joshimath. Further, we are using tunnel boring machines to prevent any damage to the surface. We don’t use any explosives here.”

PTI