UPA Chairperson and Congress president, Sonia Gandhi and union Home Minister Sushil Shinde called Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and expressed grief and sorrow at the loss of lives and property in the State due to the rains.
Both the leaders promised all possible help from the centre. Gandhi also enquired into well being of the Chief Minister, who himself was stranded for 60 hours in Sangla valley of Kinnaur district before being airlifted to Mandi for election campaigning for lok Sabha bypolls on Tuesday morning.She promised all help to the state in the hour of crisis and assured the Chief Minister that the Central Government stood by him and the State in the rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts of the state government being carried out.
Shinde took stock of the situation from the Chief Minister and enquired about the efforts being made in rescue and relief operations to take out stranded tourists and ailing local people. Virbhadra Singh requested him for adequate central assistance to cope up with the loss, the state had suffered. Efforts were on to open the roads leading to Kinnaur, especially Indo-Tibet National Highway, which was blocked at over dozen places due to landslides with the help of PWD workers and Border Road Organization (BRO) workers.
Two teams of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were also conducting rescue and rehabilitating operations in different parts of the district including at Pangi and Rekong Peo. Kinnaur deputy commissioner JM Pathania said that the things are fast returning to normalcy as weather condition improved.