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“The worst is over and Uttarakhand is on the road to recovery,” this is how the state’s Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna, on Wednesday, summed up the post-deluge situation in Uttarakhand after holding talks with Union Minister for Road Transport and Highway Oscar Fernandes.
Fernandes assured the chief minister the centre would provide all financial assistance in rebuilding the collapsed road network, especially in the Chardham Yatra circuit. He said most of the roads would be repaired before the September 30 deadline of resuming the Chardham Yatra, except Kedarnath.
“The spillover (the remaining damaged roads) can be completed in the month of October itself,” Fernandes said.
Stating that the Centre is trying to speed up the reconstruction process in the state, which was battered by the June 16-17 Himalayan tsunami, Fernandes said 1,709 roads, of the total damaged 2,138 roads, of the public works department have already been reconstructed. A total of 5,775 workers are working hard to reopen the remaining roads in the state, he stated.
The minister said all those bridges, which had collapsed or had been washed away in the floods, would also be reconstructed, but also asserted that such work required a long time. “It is not an easy task to rebuild these bridges,” he said.
He said that the work to reconstruct the roads is going on in full swing in spite of the prevailing inclement weather in the state. Fernandes added a new tunnel would be built on the Dak Kali Mandir highway leading to Dehradun city for facilitating faster movement of traffic coming from Delhi.
He said the government had identified nearly 200 slip zones in the hills, which need to be treated in order to strengthen the road networks.
