As Dehradun battled the rain fury that led to 17 deaths by late night on Tuesday, District Magistrate Savin Bansal was facing state Agriculture Minister Ganesh Joshi’s ire for not picking up the latter’s phone calls. In a video available on social media, Joshi can be seen reprimanding Bansal and asking him to mend his ways.
Joshi, who was angry with Basal for his indiscretion, met the Dehradun district magistrate at the cloudburst-hit Karlrigad area to take stock of the rescue works. As Bansal walked towards the minister, the latter questioned, “Why have you come here now when you were asked to stay on the other side.”
Bansal replied, “The entire district has not been affected, while here it was needed to be seen.” At this, the minister asked him to “mend your functioning and ways”.
To know the reason why the minister was behaving like this, the DM said, “What happened sir?”
Soon the minister, pointing at SSP Ajai Singh, who had accompanied Bansal, said, “The chief secretary picked my call in the night, Commissioner Vinay Shankar picked my call, and his SDM too picked my phone. He picked my phone only after I spoke to the chief minister today morning.”
Hearing this from the minister, Bansal moved on from there to visit disaster-affected places at the most affected Kalrigad village that witnessed cloudburst on Tuesday wee hours.
Meanwhile, the death toll in the Dehradun rain disaster reached 17 as the SDRF claimed that eight dead bodies were retrieved by them and the police from Tons river. The bodies belonged to those workers who had gone missing as their tractor trolley overturned due to rising water in the river. Besides, around 10 persons died after being buried under the debris brought by the cloudburst at Karligad or swept away in the flooding monsoon rivers Respina and Song.
More than 40 roads remained ruptured in different parts of Dehradun and connectivity with Mussoorie yet to be restored by the PWD and other agencies working hard to resume traffic. Three villages were still cut off from district headquarters as their approach roads could not be restored.