New Delhi, Jun 29 (Agencies): Bad weather has compelled authorities to halt the Amarnath Yatra at Pahalgaon and Baltal base camps and made the rescue of 2000 pilgrims in the upper reaches of Uttarakhand another challenge for the Army.
Reports say fresh problems are being posed by a swelling Bhagirathi and depleting food stocks in the cut-off villages. The district administration has begun evacuation of residents from Uttarkashi to avoid loss of life due to flooding by Bhagirathi.
Rescue operation at Badrinath is on through a newly built escort route in the Govindghat valley.
Air lifting the stranded at Joshimath has become a problem due to bad weather, reports say and add that a road from Joshimath to Govindghat is being used for evacuating the stranded.
Meanwhile, the cremation is still continuing at Kedarnath.
Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde, who was on the second visit to Dehradun since the disaster struck the state on Friday, said all out efforts would be made in the multi-agency operations to locate the missing and those trapped in the debris.
The state government said that the helicopters had rescued about 1,237 people stuck at different places in the hill state, with Harshil completed cleared of pilgrims. About 3,000 people are still reported missing, they said.
The focus now is on Badrinath Dham area, where majority of the pilgrims are stranded.
Over 8000 troops deployed
The defence forces have deployed around 50 helicopters and over 8,000 troops in flood-hit Uttarakhand to rescue 2,000 people strnaded in the state, including Badrinath and Harsil.
The IAF has deployed 37 choppers along with 13 helicopters of the Army. Together, they have flown 84 sorties in the last 24 hours for evacuating the stranded pilgrims in the state, a defence ministry release said.
The armed forces have been successful in bringing out over 650 people from the pilgrimage town of Badrinath and Harsil in the last 24 hours, it said.
In the operations which started on June 17, the two forces have deployed over 60 choppers which have flown 2,518 sorties and overall evacuated around 46,000 people from the higher reaches of the state.
Meanwhile, IAF Chief Air Chief Marshal NAK Browne received the bodies of the five IAF personnel who were killed in a helicopter crash on Tuesday.
The Airforce also carried out a mission using its ALH Dhruv choppers in Gaurikund to bring the bodies from the crash site for postmortem and for DNA analysis at Dehradun.
Wing Commander Daryll Castellino, Flight Lieutenants Tapan Kapoor and K Praveen, Junior Warrant Officer AK Singh and Sergeant Sudhakar Yadav were among the 20 people who lost their lives in the chopper crash.