New Delhi: Five families from Sunil ward in Joshimath taluk of Uttarakhand have been relocated to relief camps in light of fresh cracks appearing in the area.
Chamoli district disaster management officer Nand Kishore Joshi told the Hindustan Times of the families’ relocation and said the administration has been “monitoring the situation regularly”.
A six foot-deep hole presumably caused by monsoon rains appeared in a field in Sunil ward last month, HT reported. Local authorities told the paper that a technical team would inspect the hole soon.
The Hindi newspaper Amar Ujala reported last week that incessant rains were causing landslides in the ward, posing imminent danger to 15 families.
Locals also told the New Indian Express that cracks had appeared in Joshimath town’s subsidence-affected areas as well as in the Joshimath-Auli road, and that a new walkway built in the town had started sinking.
‘Subsidence’ refers to the sinking of something – usually part of the Earth’s surface – to a lower level.
Uttarakhand’s Joshimath town has a history of experiencing subsidence due to a combination of being built on weaker land and being a hub for construction.
Also Read: Uncontrolled Construction, Ignored Warnings: How Joshimath Sank
Over 300 families in Joshimath were displaced in January this year after subsidence caused cracks to appear in hundreds of buildings.
Monsoon rains tend to exacerbate the problem. Even in October last year, the BBC found that locals were leaving their homes in the town after existing cracks began to widen following heavy rains.
The state has experienced flooding this monsoon season, causing the deaths of at least six people and the closure of 362 roads.
And Joshimath is not the only area affected. HT reported that families in a village in Uttarakhand’s Pauri Garwhal district have fled their homes as of Monday (August 14) after more than 50 buildings developed cracks amid heavy rainfall.
An organisation called the Joshimath Bachao Sangharsh Samiti has announced that it will protest the situation in Joshimath by holding a tiranga yatra (tricolour march) on Independence Day (Tuesday, August 15) and and hold sit-ins every day starting Wednesday (August 16), HT reported.
It also reported that locals in Joshimath felt the government was being apathetic to the town’s current situation.