Working on the principle of Relief, Rescue and Rehabilitation, the Disaster Management department rescued more than 20,000 people with the help of 22 helicopters till Wednesday evening. At present, they are rescuing people from Kedarnath on priority basis.
On condition of anonymity, a senior official said the death toll could be more than 50-60 times the official figure. In other words, death toll would be in between 5,000-6,000. He said it all happened because Government officials, including the district magistrate, could not anticipate the situation despite alert of 48 hours heavy rains from June 15 onwards by the weather department on June 15.
They didn’t take the alert seriously. As a result no efforts were taken to check traffic moving towards the char Dham Yatra route. The traffic should have been stopped at Rishikesh and efforts should have been tried to shift the pilgrims from Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunotri and Gangotri.
Pilgrims had to walk 14 kilometer long stretch from Gauri Kund to reach Kedarnath. Those can afford hire mule or go in helicopters. According to the officials this year, district administration issued license to 4500 mules to ferry pilgrims to Kedarnath following on the direction of High C ourt. If you calculate the pilgrims and local inhabitants, who either run shops or work as porters or hold the rein of mules, then at any given point of time, 5000-6000 pilgrims remain on the way. In Kali Kamli guest house you can find 80-85 people, 20-25 people in GMVN guest house, 5-10 forest and 10-15 at police post.
Rambara, which was situation seven km away from Gauri Kund and Kedarnath either, was the centre point. At least 600 pilgrims were there at any given point of time because there are around 80-90 tea stalls or eating joints. Gauri Kund's floating population was 1,000 during peak season. In Gauri Kund two parking places for 200-230 vehicles could be parked.
After the Kedarnath temple, there is samadhi of Adi Guru Shhankaracharya who gave up his body near Kedarnath temple in order to attain liberation from birth and death cycle. The rain also devastated the place. On Monday, Gandhi Sarovar, which receives water from snow melting and is around 4 kilometer away from Kedarnath temple, received huge amount of rain water and later avalanche took place. As a result, Gandhi Sarovar broke and caused calamity.
Before monsoon, large number of pilgrims come for two purpose including pilgrimage and holiday due to summer vacation in schools. As per the rough estimate around 2000-2500 pilgrims can stay overnight there. Around 300-400 mule owner, 300-400 porters, who carry luggage or person in palanquin, around 500-1,000 permanent residents, who either run shops or guest house, perform puja, saint can be seen any given point of time. Besides it, around 50-100 medical, police, revenue and forest staff stay round the clock. In overall you can say that 200-2500 population stays permanently during Yatra season.
The official further said that after going through these figure one could gauge the casualty figure because officially they have rescued mere 1295 from Kedarnath so far. In other term it could be said that death toll would be 50-60 times more than the official figure. The officer further said that he had doubt that whether state would be able to resume Kedarnath Dham Yatra or notIJ