More cracks appeared on houses and roads in “sinking” Joshimath on Saturday with more families fleeing the Uttarakhand city and chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami visiting to assess the situation.

Jyotirmath (Joshimath), the abode of Adi Shankara and the home of Atharvaveda, could soon become a “haunted city”, Swami Avimukteshwaranand, the current Shankaracharya of Joshimath, said and pointed fingers at the BJPruled hill state’s government.

Half-a-dozen buildings developed cracks in the past 24 hours and five more roads caved in as the earth sank, forcing over 70 families to flee the temple town for safer places in Chamoli, the district in which Joshimath city is located.

Till Friday, cracks had appeared on 561 buildings and six roads, with residents expressing anger at the damage to soil caused by development projects and illegal constructions. Firty-seven families had been evacuated till Friday.

The Shivalinga of the Shankaracharya Madhava Ashram developed cracks while the Ma Bhagwati temple in the Singhdhar area of the town collapsed on Friday evening, Swami Avimukteshwaranand, the Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath (Joshimath) said.

“Minor incidents of subsidence and cracks on the earth had been happening here for the past one year, but the government ignored them. Even now, the government doesn’t appear to be delving deeper into the crisis and is making superfluous arrangements. Soon, Jyotirmath will turn into a haunted city just because of certain people’s greed to build enormous structures here with the assistance of the government,” he said.

Chief minister Dhami, who visited the affected areas on Saturday, acknowledged that the crisis was deepening with each passing day.

“Our priority is to save the people. Evacuation work is continuously going on in Joshimath and experts are trying to find out the reasons behind the calamity and take corrective measures,” he said.

There was a complaint of water seepage in a badminton court at J.P. Colony in the city on Friday. At least a dozen more areas reported water seepage on Saturday, with locals saying they can hear a fountain-like sound under the earth.

Led by Ranjit Sinha, secretary, disaster management, and Sushil Kumar, commissioner of Garhwal, a team visited the affected areas on Friday. On Saturday, experts from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, National Institute of Hydrology and the Geological Survey of India inspected Joshimath.

An expert said on the condition of anonymity: “We are yet to pinpoint the reasons behind the damage or the source of water under the earth or why water is seeping out. It looks scary. We need to conduct a scientific study without delay to save the religious town. This study will take time.”

The expert said huge exploitation under the earth — the breaking of hill stones for construction work — had taken place in the past few years, making the earth surface unstable. Heavy hydel power projects at an altitude of 6,000 metres above the sea level and tourism infrastructure like ropeways and big hotels may have also contributed to the damage, the expert said, echoing the concerns of locals.

Karan Mahara, the Uttarakhand Congress president, said a study in 1976 had found that Joshimath was located on a weak hilly surface in a seismic zone. This leads to frequent landslides, still government-sponsored projects have been intensified in Joshimath under BJP rule, he said.

“Several agencies had in the past recommended limited construction work in Joshimath but the BJP government disregarded every warning and deployed big agencies for heavy projects. A survey agency had said after the Kedarnath calamity in 2013 that no big project should be approved 2,200 metres above the sea level in Uttarakhand. However, the BJP government intensified work and hired big construction companies, which have been freely using dynamites to break the hills,” Mahara said.

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

“Whatever has happened in the past few days is the result of intensified landslides due to heavy exploitation under the earth,” said Jayawardhan Sah, a local. An NTPC official had on Friday denied that the company’s project had played a role in the subsidence.

“The tunnel 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,” he had said.