Stranded pilgrims make their way down a mountain on Sunday after a section of road was washed away in Govind Ghat in Uttarakhand. (AFP)

Patna/ Motihari, June 23: The state disaster management department today opened a control room at Dehradun to rescue people trapped on Uttarakhand hills following the deluge.

The control room headed by a team of senior state government officials, including public health and engineering department principal secretary Ravindra Panwar and additional director-general of police Dinesh Singh Vist, are continuously coordinating with the control rooms in Uttarakhand and in Bihar to locate the missing pilgrims and ensure their safe return home. The state government’s control room at Dehradun can be contacted at 09868214635.

The senior officials of the team camping in Dehradun met the chief minister and the chief secretary of Uttarakhand yesterday to assess the prevailing conditions.

Panwar told The Telegraph over phone from Dehradun: “We are in continuous touch with the Uttarakhand and the Bihar governments for ensuring safe return of pilgrims stranded on the hills. The armed forces, including the army, air force and Indo-Tibetan Border Police, have made three transit points around the Himalayan shrines at Gauchar near Joshimath in Chamoli district, Barsu in Uttarkashi district and Guptakashi in Rudraprayag district. People are being brought there. We are constantly communicating with the control rooms in these three districts because they are keeping state-wise record of pilgrims evacuated from different shrines.”

Panwar said the Uttarakhand government was giving Rs 2,000 to each pilgrim evacuated. The railway ministry has been asked to allow pilgrims coming down from Hardwar, Dehradun and other exit points in Uttarakhand travel free of cost.

“The railways has agreed to run special trains to Bihar and Bengal from Uttarakhand in case the number of pilgrims from the two states is more than 500,” said Panwar.

Back in Bihar, steps are being taken to ensure comfortable return of the survivors of the Uttarakhand deluge. The emergency operation centre (EOC) of the disaster management department could locate 420 of the 917 missing persons till this evening. The EOC did not receive any new missing report today.

Shivakant Prasad (70) and his wife Kamla Devi (65), residents of the Naga Road locality in Raxaul, were among the fortunate few to be back home safely from their religious trip to Badrinath, Kedarnath and other places. “We started our pilgrimage on June 3 and the weather conditions at Badrinath and Kedarnath started deteriorating on June 16. There was a melee everywhere. Like many others, we hired a private vehicle and left for Hardwar, where we stayed for about three days,” said Prasad.

“The rush on trains at Hardwar railway station reminded me of the 1947 Partition. After several futile attempts in boarding train at Hardwar, we somehow managed to reach Moradabad by a hired vehicle, where we boarded the Delhi-Raxaul train,” he added.