July 1, 2013: The criminal negligence of the shameless Uttarakhand government caused the deaths of thousands of people and a massive destruction in the state. It is now official that the Meteorological Department had informed the state government about the calamity. MeT also requested the Uttarakhand government to postpone the Char Dham yatra and to make arrangements to shift the local people to a safer place.

But sadly, the government did not pay any attention to this devastating warning. The Chief Secratary of Uttarakhand, Subhash Kumar is so prune that he did not even see the alert and thousands of people got killed. Today, the whole nation is suffering because of his negligence. 

Such irresponsible officers should be tried under the charges of massacre and they should be locked up in the jail for the rest of their lives. When facts came out, it was learnt that the Meteorological Department had sent the alert warning on June 14 itself but the state government ignored this message and destroyed the world of millions together.

The alert message was sent by the meteorological department to all the senior officials including the Uttarakhand chief secretary Subhash Kumar, Disaster Management Center, ITBP and to the Collectors of those districts which fall on the way of the Char Dham Yatra. The biggest irony is that even the chief officials of the Meteorological Department did not take this warning seriously. If the Delhi quarter of the department had taken this seriously, then this alert would have gone straight to the central government. But this did not happen. The warning of heavy rains was even issued in the agriculture advice bulletin on June 14.

Even on June 15, which is only a day before the tragedy, the prediction of heavy rains for 72 hours was given to the ITBP and the Dictrict Collector of Rudraprayag. In this warning, it was clearly stated to relocate the passengers and locals to a safer place. An advisory was also issued on June 15 in which the fear of heavy rainfall for June 16-17 was expressed and the advisory also urged the passengers to postpone their yatra for 4 days.

This warning was specifically for the areas of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, Yamunotri and Joshi Math and these are the regions where the heavy rainfall of June 16 caused the major destruction. When after repeated warnings, the meteorological department saw that the government is not taking it seriously; they again issued another advisory on the morning of June 16. This means that even then thousand lives could have been saved.

In this advisory, the District Collector of rudraprayag and the chief secretary of Uttarakhand, Subhash Kumar was alerted about the approaching calamity and the fear of heavy rainfall in 36 hours was also predicted. But seems like that the government was in some deep slumber and the country has to suffer the consequences. Now, even, the Assembly speaker of the Uttarakhand Rajya Sabha has accepted that in this calamity more than ten thousand have got killed in the Kedarnath valley itself, and the honourable Subhash Kumar is saying that this kind of warnings get issued every year.

The people of the Meteorological Department give such prediction every year but they never tell the intensity. Whereas the Director of the state meteorological department made it clear that the state chief secretary is telling lies to the people. Mr. Sharma said, "If in the advisory 'heavy rains' is written then that means it is not a routine advisory. It is only written for extreme emergency situations." Instead of taking any action against such plain lies of the chief secretary, the state government is sitting quietly.

The governing body of the Uttarakhand government in Delhi is also unable to present any clarification to the nation for this criminal activity. People have been killed, families have got devastated but the government is showing their insensitivity and this clearly shows that the power leaders and the bureaucrats are shameless, brutal and outright murderers. In their eyes, the human life is of no value and their only priority is to strip the nation to the extent of hollowness.

Ideally, all the people responsible should be charged with collective massacre and sent to jail immediately. But this seems to be a difficult action because for the politicans the Janata is only a number which gets counted only at the time of elections. And this we can clearly see by the way in which these leaders are counting numbers of the dead. 

Every year, the peak pilgrimage season at Badrinath and Kedarnath ends on June 30 with much fanfare. This year, though, June 30 is the gloomiest ever.

Source: India News, DT. July 1, 2013.