Uttarakhand: Landslide kills engineer, 2 others, working on all-weather road

DEHRADUN: Three persons, including an engineer involved in construction of the all-weather road for the central government’s Char Dham project, were killed after boulders fell on them. The incident took place in Chada area on the Bardinath highway route in the early hours of Saturday. According to police, all three bodies have been retrieved from the debris and there is minimal possibility of more casualties.
Mountain and rock cutting work is currently underway for broadening of the Badrinath road.With the Char Dham yatra scheduled to start around April-end, authorities are ensuring round-the-clock work on the route. The boulders fell on the Pokland machine being used in the construction work, damaging it badly. Machines had to be used to remove the debris and pull out the bodies. The deceased have been identified as Himanshu Singh (junior engineer), Pankaj Singh and Rakesh Kumar. While Himanshu and Pankaj are from Chamoli district, Kumar was a resident of Himachal Pradesh.
Following the accident, traffic was diverted on the Kothyalsain-Nandprayag road. Officials said that the debris would soon be removed and route would open in a short time.
Notably, this is not the first accident during the ongoing all-weather road project in the state. In the past too, deaths have been reported due to works on the project which aims to widen the highways leading to the Char Dham shrines. In a major accident in December 2018, seven labourers were killed and four others sustained injuries after they were trapped in the landslides while working on the project. The accident was reported in Rudraprayag district of Garhwal.
In March 2019, two persons were killed in a landslide while they were working on the all-weather Road project in Tehri district of Garhwal.
The accident occurred near Nagni on Chamba-Rishikesh stretch of the all-weather project when an operator and a helper were using the Pokland machine on the road construction site and a sudden landslide brought down silt and boulders on the machine.