Due to falling of boulders from the rock near Kali Mandir, Neeti Valley, Mallari Road has been closed for traffic.
Uttarakhand’s environment is fragile and the increasing human intervention in Uttarakhand Himalayas, amounting to the ecologically unfriendly development has further deteriorated the natural stability and incidents of landslides resulting in road blocks have become a common feature including falling of boulders and Rocky stones from top of the mountains on the commuters resulting in fatalities.
Though the condition of the Uttarakhand roads is mostly worrisome during the monsoon but this time in the month of April , the starting of the summer season there have been excessive rains in some parts of Uttarakhand resulting in massive arrival of silt and mud with stones and boulders submerging several cars and destroying properties including blocking traffic on maintaneous routes.
The Champawat district was most affected yesterday with several cars gutted under the increasing rain silt at Champawat, Kumaon division. Today, in Niti Valley Malari Road near the Kali temple Kosha, heavy boulders unexpectedly fell down on the road blocking it completely with heavy traffic jammed till the evening. The authorities say that it will take several hours probably after six PM in the evening hours when the road will be opened.
The rocking stones that have fallen down on the roads are extremely wide and heavy, which are being removed by heavy machines and would take lot of time. Mallari Road, Niti valley is in Chamoli district of Garhwal near Joshimath, Garhwal, Uttarakhand. Malari Road in the Dhauli Ganga valley of Uttarakhand (Niti Valley) leads from Joshimath towards the Niti village near the Indo-Tibetan border which is a crucial, high-altitude mountain road that passes through villages like Bampa and Gamshali, providing access to the Nanda Devi National Park area.
The previous year monsoon have been catastrophic in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir where the ecological disasters led to heavy human loss including loss of properties and public exchequer worth several thousand crores.
In Uttarakhand , HP and Kashmir the losses were tremendous with hundreds of houses, buildings destroyed and human beings losing their lives.
In Uttarakhand there were Dharali – THARALI disasters with heavy losses and about sixty human lives lost including several houses turned into debris due to coud burst incidents.
The story of Joshimath subsidence and cracks in one thousand houses with hundreds of families destabilised earlier with people still struggling are some of the examples of ecological disasters of Uttarakhand still fresh in everyone’s mind.
