CM Omar Abdullah questions continuance of Vaishno Devi yatra amid weather alert

As a landslide triggered by incessant rains claimed 34 lives of Vaishno Devi pilgrims, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Wednesday questioned the authorities for permitting the yatra to continue despite a high-scale alert of adverse weather conditions.

Replying to questions from reporters, Omar expressed grief over the deaths in the Vaishno Devi landslide, and asked why officials did not stop pilgrims from treading the track when there was a warning of the calamity.

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The death toll in the landslide has mounted to 34 with rescuers pulling out more bodies from under the debris, officials said on Wednesday, a day after the disaster struck the route to the hilltop shrine in Jammu and Kashmir’s Reasi district.

The pilgrimage to the shrine was suspended when the mountainside gave way and stones, boulders, and rocks came hurtling down around 3 pm on Tuesday, hitting people unawares.

The Chief Minister said, “We will have to talk about it later. When we knew about the weather, should we not have taken certain steps to save those lives? The weather warning had come to us a few days ago.”

He further questioned officials, “Why were these people on the track? Why were they not stopped? Why were they not moved to a safe place? This has to be discussed later. We feel sorrow over the loss of precious lives.”

The landslide struck at a point about halfway along the winding 12-km trek from Katra to the shrine.

There are two routes up to the shrine. While the yatra had been suspended on the Himkoti trek route since Tuesday morning, it was continuing on the old route till 1.30 pm when authorities decided to suspend it till further orders in view of the torrential rain.

Fingers are being raised on the conduct of officers who ignored the warnings of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and the Meteorological Centre. Neither the Deputy Commissioner, Reasi and nor the top officers of the Mata Vaishnodevi Shrine Board bothered to completely suspend the yatra in which pilgrims have to undertake an uphill 13 kms trek to the cave shrine.
This is not the first time that the authorities in J&K have come under criticism for taking the weather warning casually.

It is being argued that the death of 67 pilgrims in a cloudburst a few days ago, on 14 August, in the Kishtwar district could have been prevented had the authorities acted on the adverse weather warning of NDMA. More than 33 pilgrims of the Machail Mata shrine are still missing in the debris.

The NDMA had issued the alert on Wednesday evening, just hours before the tragedy struck in Kishtwar.

The Deputy Commissioner of Doda, Harvinder Singh, acted wisely on the weather warnings and recently barred civilians’ participation in the Kailash Kund yatra and cancelled permission for proceeding to the Manimahesh Yatra.