Two labourers engaged to clear debris from the road leading to the Kedarnath shrine died on Wednesday in a landslide that swept them off the hills into the valley below.
Three other labourers, reportedly engaged by a subcontractor hired for the government work at Jangalchatti along the Gaurikund-Kedarnath Road, suffered grievous injuries. The labourers had been hired to clear the road of debris from small landslips for the Chardham pilgrims to have a safe passage.
Police identified the dead as Nitin Kumar and Chandrashekhar. They hailed from Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir.
Nandan Singh Rajwar, the Rudraprayag district disaster management officer, was quoted as telling local reporters that the injured labourers have been admitted to a hospital in Gaurikund.
“They were trapped in the landslide and fell into the valley. The National Disaster Management Force brought them out of the deep ditches. Two of them died while three were seriously injured,” he said.
“The meteorological department has warned of heavy rainfall till June 23. People are expected to be alert and take every safety measure. The government agencies are also alert. The weather here during this season is unpredictable,” Rajwar added.
The meteorological department had issued a bad-weather alert in the morning but the routes were kept open for pilgrims walking to the shrine. The frequency of landslides increases when it rains in the fragile hills of Uttarakhand.
The Badrinath-Kedarnath Mandir Samiti has said that over 11 lakh devotees have visited Kedarnath during the first 47 days of the Chardham Yatra till Tuesday. In 2023, 11 lakh pilgrims had visited the shrine in the first 70 days while it took 114 days in 2024 to clock that number.
“Obviously, workers are there round the clock to keep clearing the road for the devotees. But Wednesday’s landslide was massive. Although the labourers were trained to deal with the situation, we didn’t know immediately what the ground situation was,” said an official of the local administration on the condition of anonymity.
However, another source said the labourers were untrained and had been deployed by a subcontractor. The 16km trek to the Kedarnath shrine from Gaurikund takes around eight hours.
The source said the number of devotees on foot had increased in the past few days after the helicopter crash in Gaurikund on June 15 that killed seven persons. Chopper services had remained suspended since then and couldn’t be resumed on Wednesday because of poor weather.