Three dead, four missing as car plunges into Ganga
Three people died and four others went missing after an Innova SUV they were travelling in plunged into River Ganga on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said tourist footfall increased manifold in Adi Kailash and Om Parvat two and half years ago. Addressing a gathering here on Tuesday, he appealed to the tourists coming to Uttarakhand to keep its forests and religious places clean.
“Hope you remember I visited Adi Kailash and Om Parvat in 2023. I went there after many years. The Uttarakhand chief minister told me that devotees are going there in large numbers every year after I had gone there in 2023. Earlier, only a few hundred people used to visit there in winters. In 2025, more than 40,000 devotees visited these holy places. Earlier, not even 1000 devotees came here. Imagine the strength of peoples’ daily earnings with the coming of 40,000 tourists,” said the Prime minister before he dedicated the newly-constructed Delhi-Dehradun Expressway and Economic Corridor to the people.
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The Prime Minister further said, “Uttarakhand is becoming a favoured destination for winter tourism, winter sports, and wedding destination. Year-long tourism is important for the economy of Uttarakhand. Hence, I have been requesting for winter tourism. I am happy that tourist footfalls in various locations are increasing every year.”
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Recalling his appeal for the promotion of winter tourism in Uttarakhand, Modi stressed, “in 2024 nearly 80,000 devotees visited these places for winter tourism and the figure crossed 1.5 lakh in 2025. We are trying to make a developed India balancing development, nature and culture. That is why infrastructural developments are worked out with these core trio values. Infrastructure must support the people and must not be a discomfort for the wildlife therein.”
He added that around 12 kilometers long elevated wildlife corridor constructed with the expressway will prevent obstructions for the movements of pachyderm and other animals. This stretch of the corridor is a dense forest cover with huge wildlife wealth.
Modi appealed to the tourists coming from other parts of India to Uttarakhand to keep the hill state clean. “Forests and hills are the holy legacies of the Devbhumi. I appeal to all the tourists coming to this place that it’s the duty of all to keep these places clean. Plastics and mounds of wastes defoil the purity of Devbhumi. We must keep these places and our pilgrimage sites clean,” he said.
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