Dehradun, July 27, 2013: Rain lashed some parts of Uttarakhand on Friday, triggering landslips and causing road blocks. But relief operations continued in the flood-hit State as the weather remained largely clear.

Officials of the Uttarakhand Disaster Management and Mitigation Centre said landslips held up traffic on the Rishikesh-Gangotri Highway near Dharasu-Nalupani in Uttarkashi district. The Rishikesh-Badrinath Highway was also blocked near Kaleshwar, and efforts were being made to reopen it.

In New Delhi, a top official of the Ministry of Earth Sciences said the melting of glaciers and heavy rains caused the rivers to overflow, resulting in the State’s worst natural disaster. “The floods were not only due to rains but also because of melting of snow. Rainfall came almost two weeks early in the State. During that period, winter snow was already there.

“When the rains came, snow melted and flowed down along with the rains which increased the volume of water in rivers significantly,” the Ministry Secretary Shailesh Nayak said.

BJP’s charge

The State unit of BJP accused the Uttarakhand government of having failed to adequately deal with last month’s calamity saying that had the administration reacted promptly, many more lives could have been saved. A three-member BJP panel led by Uma Bharti to assess the damage caused by the disaster, said a “major failure” of the State government was the absence of any alerts even after the first three days of heavy rainfall before June 15-16.

Source: The Hindu, DT. July 27, 2013.