Badrinath and Uttarkashi areas in Uttarakhand....

Exactly 15 days after a cloudburst caused widespread flooding and devastation in Uttarakhand, the armed forces on Monday brought 600 pilgrims stranded in the flood-ravaged upper reaches of Badrinath in the hill State to safety. It effectively ends the fortnight-long rescue operations the nearly 10,000 defence personnel were engaged in.
It also means the armed forces will gradually withdraw from the relief work, though some of the troopers will be retained to reach food and other supplies to locals in interior parts of the flood-hit districts of the State.
In a related development, Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna imposed a blanket ban on construction of houses and commercial establishments along the banks of rivers and announced setting up of a statutory body to look into planning and development of the flood-hit areas.
However, what has now become a major cause for concern for the Army personnel, deployed in Uttarakhand to defend the nation’s territory from Chinese threat, is that their own stock of monsoon food and other supplies has depleted after it was distributed to over one lakh stranded pilgrims.
There are nearly 25,000 Army troopers deployed in the six brigade-sized formations at Dehradun, Raiwala, Roorkee, Chaubatia and Pithoragarh in the Kumaoni and Garhwali hills and the three regimental centres at Lansdowne, Ranikhet and Roorkee. These forces are there to defend the Indian territory in the hill State that borders Tibet along the 545-km central sector of the 4,057-km Line of Actual Control (LAC).
In June, the Army formations in the State had monsoon supplies for its troopers until September. However, this stock has depleted after it was used to feed the pilgrims, who got isolated in important pilgrimage centres including Kedarnath, Badrinath, Joshimath, Gangotri and Yamunotri, in the aftermath of the flashfloods.
“In the last 24 hours, we rescued 628 persons from Badrinath and with this, all the rescue effort has been completed. As many as 500 locals are to be temporarily brought out from Badrinath, which will be done tomorrow. But rescue of visitors from outside the State is over,” a senior Defence Ministry official said here on Monday. “We will continue to deploy helicopters to drop supplies to the locals. Some troopers will be assisting in the relief work. But the rest will be sent back to their defence duties soon,” the official noted.