-Outlook The legendary environmentalist and Chipko visionary on the recent floods in Uttarakhand In the more than eight decades of his existence, legendary environmentalist and Chipko visionary Sunderlal Bahuguna has never been witness to the kind of devastation that Uttarakhand has seen recently. In an interview, he explains why the government can no longer ignore the environmental concerns of the locals. * Tell us about your escape. We heard that you had...

-PTI Dehradun: The blame game over Uttarakhand deluge escalated on Sunday with the Meteorological department saying it had issued "timely" warnings of heavy rains and landslides but the state government claimed these were not "specific". The assertions by the MeT department and the state government, two weeks after heavy rains triggered floods and landslides that ravaged Uttarakhand, came amid questions whether the administration ignored the warnings and whether large-scale deaths in the...

-IANS DEHRADUN/ HARIDWAR: There was still no clarity over the number of deaths in the flood-ravaged Uttarakhand, with a state minister on Sunday not ruling out an "estimate" of 10,000-plus and chief minister Vijay Bahuguna putting the number of missing people at 3,000. Uttarakhand health minister Surinder Singh Negi did not discount assembly speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal's claim on Saturday of the toll in the tragedy having crossed 10,000. "He (Kunjwal) has given...

-PTI   Chennai: With environmentalists citing ecological degradation as the reason for the natural disaster in Uttarakhand, the Centre on Sunday said it would take stock of the situation and study such concerns once rescue operations were completed. "We have to wait till the rescue operations are over and then we have to take stock of the situation before we decide on anything," the Union Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan told reporters in Chennai. She...

-The Hindu     The journalist who first wrote the story with the ‘15,000 Gujarati pilgrims' claim says his source for the figure was Anil Baluni, the BJP's spokesperson in Haldwani in Uttarakhand. For three days running, there was no reaction from the Bharatiya Janata Party to reports that the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, had evacuated ‘15,000 Gujaratis' from Uttarakhand in the course of a two-day visit to the hill State. But with...