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Incessant rain wreaks havoc in state; 3 dead
Roads blocked in Kumaon due to landslides
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Showers wash away claims of disaster management: BJP
Nishank helps rescue stranded youths
Booth-level poll of Youth Cong from June 20
BJP writes to Guv, seeks special Assembly session
Jal Jangal Jamin Swaraj Abhiyan reaches Pithoragarh
Non-availability of hybrid seeds, absence of doctors bemoaned
Governor to honour elderly women
Bahuguna-Harish Rawat camps headed towards rapprochement
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Incessant rain wreaks havoc in state; 3 dead
Dehradun, June 16 Uttarakhand is experiencing a heavy rainfall for the past two days and there seems no respite for two more days. Three persons were killed when a house caved in the Mittiberi area of Premnagar this morning. The deceased are a couple and its 10-year-old child. Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna has announced an ex gratia of Rs 1.5 lakh to next of kin of the deceased. In another incident, four persons were injured in a rain-related accident in the Kedarnath region. A 30-m-long stretch of a road caved in at Kunchanjunga, 5 km from Badrinath. A parked vehicle swept away near Gaurikund, Kedarnath, by the swirling water of the Mandakini river. Roads to the shrines of Gangotri and Yamunotri are also blocked at various places due to the accumulation of the debris. At Sangamchatti in Uttarkashi district, a suspension bridge washed away in the rains, leaving seven villages cut off from the rest of the region. In Dehradun, rains that started on Friday night continued today, disrupting the normal life. Being Sunday, people preferred remaining indoor as most of the key roads in the city are waterlogged. Dr Anand Sharma, Executive Director, Dehradun Meteorological Centre, said Dehradun experienced 220 mm of rainfall in the past 24 hours. He said rains would continue for the next 36 hours. “It could be a heavy rainfall at a few places in the state in the next 36 hours,” he said. He said Char Dham pilgrims had been issued an advisory to proceed further with their yatra after going through the forecast. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna has directed private chopper companies operating in Badrinath and Kedarnath to provide their services in case they are needed to meet any exigency. He also directed for the setting up of a control room at the Secretariat in Dehradun. All District Magistrates have been asked to provide water, foodgrains and medicines to the stranded pilgrims. Through videoconferencing, the Chief Minister reviewed conditions in the entire state. Bahuguna has also asked ITBP and BRO officials to ensure speedy opening of the Char Dham routes blocked by the debris.
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Roads blocked in Kumaon due to landslides
Pithoragarh, June 16 Sources in the district disaster management office said seven roads, two in Dharchula, four in Munsiyari and one in Gangolihat subdivision, are blocked due to the accumulation of the debris. People are stranded at various places for the past 36 hours. District disaster management officer RS Rana said the district had witnessed 37 mm of rainfall in the past 36 hours. Munsiyari received the maximum rainfall of 44 mm in the past 24 hours. Two heavy machines meant for drilling and boring were swept away at Sobla by the strong current of Dhaulaganga. The work on a a new hydropower scheme is under way at the site. He said two houses also collapsed in Pithoragarh district. Sources said the Kali was flowing one meter above the mark and the water level in the Gori had increased three times, creating panic among residents of Baram town situated near the river. According to reports received from various parts of the district, roads from Jauljibi to Munsiyari, Tawaghat to Pangla, Tejam to Bharari, Hokra to Sheraghat, Kanalichina to Didihat and Hokra to Sainrathi have become inaccessible. Bageshwar is the worst hit, where most of the roads are blocked. A road to Sama and Gogina which links the district headquarters to the interior part of the district is inaccessible for the past one week. Besides, the road that links Bageshwar with the other areas is blocked at Garur and Dharamaghar, making the district cut off from Pithoragarh and Almora districts. |
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Showers wash away claims of disaster management: BJP
Dehradun, June 16 Bhatt alleged that 20,000 pilgrims and tourists had been stranded in Gangotri, Dharasu and Sainz in Uttarkashi district of the state. People were also stranded on the Char Dham Yatra route, he added. He said the state government had been engrossed in its own "infighting" and there was "no focus" on the problems being faced by the people of the state. He demanded that the Congress government should resign on moral grounds for its “failure” to provide aid to the people in the time of disaster. He alleged that while the entire state had been facing disaster for the last two days, Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna was camping in New Delhi.
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Nishank helps rescue stranded youths
Dehradun, June 16 He toured the low-lying areas of Harrawala, Kunwala and Doiwala and talked to officials to provide help to the needy people of his constituency. He was informed that a group of youngsters are stranded at an island in the Song river. Nishank immediately called a rescue team from Rishikesh which came with their raft and rescued the stranded youths. The former Chief Minister also talked to senior district officials regarding administrative measures to tackle any rain-related disaster.
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Booth-level poll of Youth Cong from June 20
Dehradun, June 16 They said the final voters' list had been published and the elections would be held in all the 70 Assembly segments of the state. The two leaders informed that there were a total of 89,645 voters, of which 12,347 are women.
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BJP writes to Guv, seeks special Assembly session
Dehradun, June 16 In the letter, Rawat alleged that the state government, which had the support of three Independents, three BSP members and one UKD legislator, had lost the confidence of the majority of the Congress legislators. Rawat said Congress legislators had publicly said that they had lost confidence in the Chief Minister and also threatened to resign. Rawat said the disgruntled Congress legislators even met state Assembly Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal and offered to resign. He said a total of 18 Congress legislators were unhappy with the functioning of the Chief Minister. He alleged that the state had been facing a grave financial crisis as the government had failed to generate resources. Rawat alleged that corruption had reached new levels and it was confirmed by Kunjwal, who publicly confessed to it and also talked about the lack of development during the present Congress regime. aHe requested the Governor to convene a special session of the Assembly for the Congress government to prove its majority on the floor of the House. |
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Jal Jangal Jamin Swaraj Abhiyan reaches Pithoragarh
Pithoragarh, June 16 The abhiyan aimed at saving natural resources of the state. Addressing a gathering at Almora, leader of the abhiyan and well-known Gandhian Radha Behn said social and political value system in the country had become rotten due to the non-attached nature of “The new example of this looting practice has become visible in Charaba, near Dehradun, where the water resources saturated by the villagers for thousands of years are being given on a platter to multinational corporations by the state government,” Behn said. Behn said the world nowadays was facing the worst environmental crisis as forests were being destroyed to make place for big dams, which was consequently melting glaciers and creating green house effects. “This situation has created a crisis for the entire civilisation today,” Behn said. Another batch of abhiyan, which reached Pithoragarh district headquarters under the leadership of Amarnath Bhai, former president of the Sarv Sewa Sangh, held interactions with the local intellectuals at the Nagar Palika Parishad Hall of the town. Bhai said in the last 10 years, 1.80 crore hectare of fertile land in the country had gone out of cultivation as it had been given away for other purposes, thus creating a larger domain of landless labourers and encouraging suicides by farmers in the country. “Alone in Uttarakhand, over 53,027 acres of agriculture land has gone into non-agriculture hands in the last 12 years of the creation of the state,” said Bhai. The abhiyan yatra, which will conclude at Kausani on June 20, has urged the people to come forward to save rivers and other water sources and not let any public land go to corporate hands without the permission of gram sabhas. “We will have to cover every village of the state under the strong organisation of gram sabhas as soon as possible, only then we will be able to save villages as well as water and other resources in the state,” Behn said. |
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Dehradun Zila Panchayat Meeting
Dehradun, June 16 A proposal regarding the holding of panchayat elections on the basis of the 2011 Census was made at the meeting held by Parmal Chauhan, member of the Zila Panchayat. The member said they had opposed the government’s efforts to hold elections on the basis of 2011 Census. “We will approach the high court in case the government tried to hold the panchayat elections on the basis of the 2011 Census,” said Parmal Chauhan. At the meeting presided over by Dehradun Zila Panchayat Madhu Chauhan issues pertaining to six departments were discussed. The members urged the chairman to submit the proposal to the departments concerned. Raising the issue of hybrid seeds, Surat Singh Chauhan, member of the Vikas Nagar block, said officials of the Horticulture Department had left a large number of farmers high and dry by failing to provide them with hybrid seeds. “It seems that only a favoured few get hybrid seeds and the others are left with poor quality seeds,” he said. Kamurudin, a member from Sherpur, drew the attention of the board towards the non-availability of farm equipment in Dehradun. He said that as a result, the farmers were forced to procure the equipment from Haryana and Punjab. “In fact, the government has deliberately done away with the subsidy scheme so that the farmers abandon farming and are forced to sell their land for commercial purposes. The ban on tractors has also been imposed as it was alleged that they were being used for ferrying sand and other mining materials,” alleged Kamarudin. Malti Chauhan, another Zila Panchayat member, raised the issue of absence of gynaecologists at delivery centres located in the Doiwala block. At the board meeting, issues from six departments were discussed in the presence of departments concerned.
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Governor to honour elderly women
Dehradun, June 16 Rajya Sabha MP Tarun Vijay, who is supervising preparations for the yatra, said through the programme, a message must go to society to honour their elders, particularly women. Tarun Vijay said preparations for the yatra were almost complete.
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Dehradun diary
The battle of supremacy in the Uttarakhand Congress has taken an interesting turn with both the camps -- one of Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna and the other of Union Water Resources Minister Harish Rawat -- talking of resolving their differences within party forums. The events of the past week indicated that the differences between the two groups could spiral into a bigger crisis, casting a shadow on the survival of the state Congress government. However, probably tough talk from the party high command has had a soothing effect on the warring Congress leaders.
The crisis in the fractured Uttarakhand Congress surfaced after Harish Dhami, Dharchula Congress legislator and strong supporter of Harish Rawat, was sent to judicial custody by the Didihat court for ignoring non-bailable warrants issued against him. Interestingly, the state government had requested for the withdrawal of the case against him, but the court had rejected it and sent the offending legislator to judicial custody. This gave an opportunity to the Harish Rawat camp to launch an offensive against the Chief Minister and his style of functioning. Four of the Congress legislators led by Harish Dhami opened a front against the Chief Minister and threatened to resign, with the tacit understanding of their leader Harish Rawat. Vijay Bahuguna, in his first reaction, stated that since these legislators owed their allegiance to Harish Rawat, he should tackle them. Harish Rawat came to Dehradun and defended the conduct of his legislators, stating that these legislators were concerned about the developmental works in their respective assembly segments and their posturing should not be termed as rebellion. Vijay Bahuguna, in a conciliatory move, invited the four legislators for talks last week, but they refused to meet him. Instead, they went to the residence of Uttarakhand Planning Minister Dinesh Aggarwal who also belongs to Harish Rawat camp to air their greivances. The move by the Congress legislators further eroded the authority of the Chief Minister and put a question mark over the stability of the Congress government. Uttarakhand Congress spokesperson Dhirendra Pratap added fuel to the fire by demanding that three of these legislators, namely Himesh Khrakwal, Manoj Tewari and Mayukh Mehar who are also holding the offices of parliamentary secretaries and deputy chairman of the State Planning Commission, should resign on moral grounds since they did not have faith in the leadership of the Chief Minister. The statement created a furore in Congress circles and another war of words began between the two groups. The legislators of the Harish Rawat group demanded the immediate sacking of the spokesperson. The Chief Minister and Uttarakhand Congress chief Yashpal Arya denied any role in the statement and also ruled out sacking of Dhirendra Pratap. But bad blood between the Congress groups invited the attention of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which demanded that the Chief minister should prove his majority on the floor of the assembly since he had lost confidence of his own party legislators. This was, probably, the reason that both the groups started talking of conciliatory terms with Pradeep Tamta, Congress MP from Almora and another strong supporter of Harish Rawat and meeting the Chief Minister to plead on behalf of the disgruntled legislators. These legislators also denied that they were out to oust the Bahuguna government and termed their dissent as an internal matter of the party. They hoped that it would be resolved. The pattern of dissent by the Harish Rawat group is the same as seen during the N.D. Tewari regime, but with more aggression. At that time, too, Harish Rawat had assumed the role of the opposition despite being the state Congress chief after being denied the post of Chief Minister in 2002. Indeed, it is an irony that Harish Rawat, being the tallest Congress leader of the state and having the support of maximum number of legislators in 2002 and 2012 assemblies, could not become the Chief Minister of the state. He has been a minister in the Union Council of Ministers since 2009, but his ambition of becoming the Chief Minister of his native state has remained unfulfilled till now, resulting in a bitter power struggle within the state Congress. -- S.M.A. Kazmi |
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Former Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank helped rescue a group of youngsters stranded at an island in the Song river near Doiwala today.
Since morning, Nishank was visiting the areas of his Assembly segment of
Doiwala. He toured the low-lying areas of Harrawala, Kunwala and Doiwala and talked to officials to provide help to the needy people of his constituency.
