Badrinath: Bad weather has once again hampered rescue operations in Uttarakhand's Badrinath with over 800 pilgrims and locals still waiting to be airlifted. Rescue operations were supposed to wrap up on Monday, with the security forces attempting to evacuate stranded pilgrims at Badrinath.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahaguna has said that more than 1,300 villages remain cut-off by road and that 3,000 people are still missing. Bahaguna also said that a team of 200 people, consisting of officials of various departments, including police, health, animal husbandry experts and sanitation, will be sent to Kedarnath to collect DNA samples of bodies before the last rites are conducted.
Rains on Sunday had affected the National Disaster Response Force's (NDRF) plans to reach Kedarnath town and extricate the dead buried in the rubble and mud after the flash floods and landslides that ravaged the town.
"NDRF team had planned to go to Kedarnath town with heavy equipments to extricate the bodies, but the heavy lift helicopters could not take off with the equipments due to bad weather," M Sashidhar Reddy, Vice Chairman of National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) told reporters in Delhi. "Clearing tonnes of debris lying in the affected areas and extricating decaying bodies which may be lying under them is our top most priority at the moment," said DGP Satyavrat Bansal after a review meeting of top officials.
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