Massive landslide leads to more than five hour traffic snarl on Srinagar Badrinath highway

During the monsoon season, the hill state of Uttarakhand is in real doldrums. The reason being heavy unpredictable landslides on the national highway as well as on the interior roads leading villages and towns thus awfully affecting the lives of the commuters for hours together.

This has almost become the order of the day in Uttarakhand hills despite the best efforts of the Border Roads Organisation and the PWD to clear the roads.

The mountains of Uttarakhand are not that old and are rather on the growing stage say seismologists therefore prone to earthquakes and massive landslides. On Thursday today a heavy traffic with hundreds of heavy vehicles, ( trucks, buses, cars, taxies, Max vehicles and motorbikes carrying passengers, pilgrims and tourists were jammed for more than five hours on on Sri Nagar Dhari Devi, Garhwal near Farasu Hanuman temple road which is the main thoroughfare for pilgrims, tourists and people heading for ancient religious shrine Kedarnath, Badrinath and Hemkunth Sahib.

The traffic on both the sides of the road was jammed leading to immense inconvenience and hardships to thousands of commuters.

In view of the heavy and uncontrollable rainfall a massive landslide occurred on Badrinath Road with tons of mountain rubble coming in the mid of the road thus closing the road for more than five to six hours leading in immense traffic snarl with hundreds of vehicles from both sides from Badrinath to Srinagar Garhwal and vice versa stranded in between for hours together.

The National Highway employees had to confront unending problems in clearing the huge rubble of landslide as its flow was not stopping.

After immense efforts and deploying of several machines the hundreds of tons of rubble could be cleared by 7.00 PM thus allowing stranded passengers, several hundred rather thousands in numbers, heave a sigh of relief.

The traffic, however, had to be diverted from Pauri Chungi to Dewalgarh and Chati Khal road after great effort and inconvenience. During monsoon, Uttarakhand is poised to face heavy traffic snarls due to unpredictable landslides every now and then but the government of the state should also ensure that it regulates the heavy traffic which has created a hell of a situation in the hills thus adversely affecting its environment as well as the lives of the local populace.