Bodies of four more missing workers recovered from avalanche site, rescue operation ends
Dehradun (Uttarakhand), Mar 2 (PTI): The bodies of the last four of the trapped labourers were pulled out from the site of the avalanche-hit Border Roads Organisation (BRO) camp in Chamoli on Sunday, taking the death toll to eight as authorities ended the nearly 60-hour rescue operation.
Army doctors said 46 workers who were rescued on Saturday have been brought to the military hospital in Jyotirmath. Two of them have been referred to AIIMS, Rishikesh. Three of the workers are in critical condition, Lt Col DS Maldhya said.
The body of the last missing worker has also been retrieved. The recovery marks the culmination of the Mana village rescue operation, Defence Public Relations Officer (PRO) Lt Col Manish Shrivastava said.
"Out of the 54 labourers who went missing after the avalanche, 46 were rescued alive and eight found dead," Chamoli District Magistrate Sandeep Tiwari said.
Four bodies were retrieved on Saturday and as many on Sunday.
Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami expressed grief at the death of eight people in the avalanche even as he thanked all the agencies involved in the rescue operations.
"All rescue teams, including the local administration, Army, SDRF worked with indomitable courage, loyalty and dedication. Despite difficult conditions, they put in all their strength to evacuate the workers safely, which is highly commendable. I salute their courage and dedication," Dhami said.
He also thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh for providing necessary support.
He said proper arrangements have been made in hospitals for the treatment of injured workers. The process of handing over the bodies of the deceased workers to their families is underway, the CM said.
The chief minister also gave instructions to develop a mechanism for monitoring avalanches so that the loss in such incidents is minimised in future.
Disaster Management Secretary Vinod Kumar Suman said the rescuers did a commendable job by completing such a difficult operation amid weather challenges in snowy terrain so quickly.
Advance equipment like victim locating cameras and thermal imaging cameras were deployed on Sunday to trace the missing labourers, SDRF commandant Arpan Yaduvanshi told PTI.
The instruments that help locate people trapped in a rubble heap had also been used during the Reini disaster, he said.
The avalanche hit the BRO camp between Mana and Badrinath on Friday, burying the 54 workers inside eight containers and a shed. Earlier, it was believed that the total number of trapped labourers was 55 but one of them was on unauthorised leave and had reached home safely.
More than 200 personnel from the disaster management authority, ITBP, BRO, NDRF, SDRF, IAF, district administration, health department and fire brigade were engaged in the rescue operation. Located three kilometres from Badrinath, Mana is the last village on the India-Tibet border at a height of 3,200 metres.
The last missing worker found dead was 43-year-old Arvind Kumar Singh from the Clement Town area in Dehradun. The others whose bodies were pulled out on Sunday were identified as Anil Kumar (21) from Rudrapur in Uttarakhand's Udham Singh Nagar district, Ashok (28) from Fatehpur in Uttar Pradesh and Harmesh from Una in Himachal Pradesh, the officials said.
The bodies have been brought to Jyotirmath by helicopter where the post-mortem was being done at the Community Health Centre.
Helicopters, sniffer dogs and thermal imaging technology were used to expedite the rescue operation, officials said.
Six helicopters -- three of the Indian Army Aviation Corps, two of the Indian Air Force (IAF) and a civil chopper hired by the Army were engaged in the operation, the defence PRO said.
The rescue operation lasted nearly 60 hours amid inclement weather for the first two days. However, the weather was largely clear on Sunday.
Earlier in the day, CM Dhami visited the Uttarakhand State Emergency Operation Centre to monitor the rescue operations while Lt Gen Anindya Sengupta, GOC-in C, Central Command, and Lt Gen D G Mishra, GOC, Uttar Bharat, remained at the avalanche site.
The traumatised survivors brought to the military hospital in Jyotirmath recounted their horrifying ordeal.
BRO worker Jagbir Singh from Amritsar said he was sleeping in his container camp when the snowslide sent them tumbling several hundred metres down.
"The container we were in went rolling down. By the time we could figure out what had happened, I found a colleague had died and one of my legs was fractured. I also had an injury in the head. There were heaps of snow everywhere," he said.
They somehow trudged to what appeared to be a kiosk with very little space, which was some distance from where they were stuck in the snow. "We were rescued after 25 hours during which 14-15 of us had just one blanket to cover us. We ate snow when we felt thirsty," he said.
Munna Prasad from Vaishali district in Bihar said, "We lay scattered under snow for around 12 hours. Snow was clogging our noses. It was difficult to breathe. However, thankfully the Army and ITBP teams came to our rescue before it was too late."
Vipin Kumar from Himachal Pradesh said everything happened in a flash. An Army guest house served as a shelter for many stranded labourers who spent nearly 25 hours in sub-zero temperatures without proper clothing, he said.
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Post poll TN alliances divided in supporting TVK
Chennai (PTI): In a changed political atmosphere in Tamil Nadu with no single political party having a simple majority to form the government post the Assembly election, opinion is divided among the allies led by the Dravidian majors in extending external support to Vijay-led TVK in government formation.
Both the DMK and AIADMK are at unease as the Congress and also a section in the AIADMK express willingness to extend external support to Vijay-led Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagtam in forming the government.
Post poll, the TVK's political prospects appear to impact alliances led by both the Dravidian majors in a different manner, triggering a speculation of a split.
Leema Rose Martin, who won from Lalgudi on an AIADMK ticket, has stated that talks were underway on extending support to the TVK. Her son-in-law Aadhav Arjuna, who won from Villivakkam is TVK's general secretary.
On May 5, former AIADMK minister O S Manian, emerging from his meeting with party general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami, stated that AIADMK would not support TVK in forming the government.
The AIADMK, which finished third in the elections with 47 seats has cancelled its meeting of MLAs designate on Wednesday amidst a difference in extending external support to the TVK, which won 108 seats, including two seats by its founder Vijay.
As Vijay is gearing up for his swearing-in on May 7, the police have tightened security at his residence here. The party has lodged its MLA-elect at a resort in Mamallapuram and has simultaneously engaged in talks with the Congress and AIADMK, a source said.
The DMK that won 59 seats on its own, has convened a meeting of its newly elected legislators on May 7 evening and the party is likely to elect the youth wing secretary Udhayanidhi Stalin, who won from Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni as its legislature party leader.
Congress general secretary K C Venugopal admitted that TVK chief Vijay requested the Congress for support to form the government.
"The INC is clear that the mandate in Tamil Nadu is for a secular government, committed to protecting the Constitution in letter and spirit. The INC is determined not to allow the BJP and its proxies to run the government of Tamil Nadu in any manner. Thiru Vijay has also spoken about drawing inspiration from Perunthalaivar Kamaraj," he said.
Accordingly, the Congress leadership has directed the TNCC to take a final decision on Vijay’s request, keeping in view the sentiments of the state as reflected in the electoral verdict, Venugopal said in a statement.
DMK spokesperson Saravanan Annadurai slammed the Congress decision and said the move to ally with TVK, pledging the support of its five MLAs to the party, was tantamount to "backstabbing the DMK and the people of Tamil Nadu."
"They have betrayed the mandate given by the people. Even before the ink on the returning officer’s signature on the victory certificate has dried, they have chosen to go ahead with this alliance," he told PTI.
The most important question was who took this "foolhardy decision, and how is it going to backfire on the Congress?" he asked.
"I don’t think they had any serious deliberation on this. The larger issue is their opposition to the BJP, which is their ideological enemy. We have supported the Congress throughout. It was our leader M K Stalin, who named Rahul Gandhi as the prime ministerial candidate when the BJP and RSS were criticising him. And now, within a day, they say they are supporting TVK. This is not the mandate of the people of Tamil Nadu,” Saravanan said.
The Congress' exit from its long-standing alliance with the DMK will be a significant moment in the political scenario of the state, commentator and political analyst Sumanth Raman said.
The Congress may be betting on the TVK as a long-term partner option, but that comes with risks, as the TVK is as yet an unknown quantity, he said.
"For the DMK, if the TVK+Congress becomes the choice of the minorities as it well could, it is an existential threat. It was the minority vote that gave the DMK alliance a 12%-15% cushion in the polls. If that goes, their chances of winning drops dramatically," Raman said on 'X.'
The Congress won 5 seats. However, DMK's other allies, the IUML, VCK, CPI and CPI (M) and DMDK have categorically stated that they would not support TVK.
As of now, the TVK requires the support of 11 MLAs to attain a simple majority of 118 to form the government.
The PMK, which won 4 seats and AMMK one - both allies of AIADMK - have not announced their decision yet.
"AIADMK’s real post-result drama may not be outside the party, but inside it. Whispers from the west and north suggest that a Coimbatore hand and a Villupuram voice may soon ask the question everyone is avoiding: Is it time to save the party from the leadership, before the cadre are forced to do it themselves? In politics, coups don’t begin with slogans. They begin with silence, phone calls and “review meetings,” Aspire Swaminathan, who is credited with founding the AIADMK IT wing in 2014, said on 'X.'
He has resigned from the AIADMK in 2021 and now acts an as independent political analyst.
