Reacting sharply to the Opposition’s allegation of Kadar valley having not been restructured despite three years having passed since the deluge, Chief Minister Harish Rawat said on Thursday that the BJP had made it a habit to conjure up scams in everything. “If they look around and have the capacity to admit what they are seeing, they must say that we have achieved a great deal by bringing things back on track. Can they deny that the footfalls of the pilgrims and tourists are nearing a record by exceeding our expectationsIJ This is thanks to our relentless endeavour to restructure Kedar valley and provide comforts to those bound for other dhams,” he said.
He said their target is to attract 50 lakh pilgrims and tourists taken together this year. “The figure we have fixed exclude those participating in Kanwad and Nanda Devi Rajjjat Yatra,” he said.
He said that he has asked the officials to start preparation for the upcoming Kanwad Yatra and Kailash Mansarovar Yatra. Things are in progress, he said. He reiterated his resolve to build fool-proof roads along the char dham yatra routes. “They would not need to be impacted by the vagaries of nature. landslide happens during rainy season. So we have decided to make these roads landslide -proof by 2018-19. However, currently the yatra is not obstructed as we have deployed officials along with equipment. They are clearing the debris in one or two hours. Now, we are giving more emphasis on the people’s comfort. We are stressing to build up alternate route of Kedarnath,” CM said.
He affirmed that his government is fully alive to woes of the people who had lost hearth and home and near and dear ones to the deluge. “We have rehabilitated all the disaster -affected families. Now we are giving emphasis on shifting those inhabiting the disaster prone villages. We are firming up fool -proof plan to evacuate them to safer places. For this, we have divided these villages into three categories- extra sensitive villages, sensitive villages and less sensitive villages,” he said.
“To meet the exigency, we have upgraded our disaster management. State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) has become example for other states. Now, we are building disaster management system up to the Nyay Panchayat level. We would rope in NCC, NSS and ex-servicemen. We are raising the number of disaster rescue volunteers. Now, we are planning to regularize these volunteers. Disaster management has become more sensitive towards geological condition,” he said.
Citing Nepal earthquake, he said they had imbibed lessons from it. “We are imparting training and issuing guidelines However, we hope that the Centre would come forward to clear the disaster relief fund, allocated way back when Manmohan Singh led UPA regime was ruling at the Centre. They had allocated around Rs 8000 for rehabilitation of Uttarakhand, then reeling under the impact of the disaster. They had even released a large chunk of the sanctioned budget. We are sending them the proposal of shifting 352 disaster- prone villages. We need funds for this other than what the UPA-II had sanctioned ,” CM said.
Rawat appealed to the people to take pledge to work together to bring smile back on the faces of the disaster-affected people. “We would face all the upcoming challenges together,” he said.