-IANS NEW DELHI: While thousands have suffered the fury of floods in Uttarakhand, experts say worse tragedies may strike the region unless the rampant violation of the Himalayan state's sensitive ecology is checked. Environmentalists blamed the volume of the disaster on the dams, indiscriminate construction, uncontrolled tourism and ignorance about the fragile ecology of the area. Experts have called for an immediate halt to unchecked tourism, especially religious tourism, and haphazard construction. "The...
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Uttarakhand disaster plan doesn't exist, CAG warned in April -Subodh Varma
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: As a humongous natural calamity grips Uttarakhand, it is now emerging that the state has had no disaster management plan worth its name despite the region being highly disaster prone due to fragile mountains, tectonic activity and climatic events. A Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) released as recently as on April 23 this year says that the State Disaster Management Authority, which was formed in October...
More »Build—and collapse -KumKum Dasgupta
-The Hindustan Times If there is one defining collage of the ongoing monsoon mayhem in Uttarakhand, it's this: multi-storied concrete houses collapsing like a pack of cards into an angry, wild river and cars and lorries being tossed around in the swirling muddy waters, as if they were plastic toys. As I watched the unfolding drama on TV, I remembered what a green campaigner told me some years ago in Uttarkashi:...
More »CAG had warned three years ago about damage to hills -Pradeep Thakur
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The devastation in the Garhwal Himalayas was pretty much on predicted lines and man-made. An environmental assessment of the Bhagirathi and Alaknanda rivers three years ago by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had warned of severe hazards both for natural ecology and stabilization of hill slopes along the riverbed, erosion of which has resulted in hundreds of casualties in the flash floods. The report --...
More »Most states can’t stock food grains for more than a month -Pradeep Thakur
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: With the UPA government serious about implementing the Food Security Bill, the Committee on Public Undertakings, headed by Congress's Jagdambika Pal, will take up for discussion on Monday a recent report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on the assessment of food grain management across the country. The auditor's report paints a grim picture on the states' lack of capability to manage operational stock of...
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