Indian authorities will demolish some buildings in a northern Himalayan town near the China border after evacuating families in the past few days, an official said, as hundreds of houses developed cracks in the area popular with pilgrims.
Experts and residents have long warned that large-scale
construction work in and around Joshimath town, including for
power projects built by companies like state-run NTPC,
could lead to land subsidence.
NTPC, India’s largest power producer, says its tunnelling
and other work is not responsible for the cracks in the town of
about 17,000 people.
Joshimath is a gateway to Hindu and Sikh shrines and is
popular with tourists looking to trek parts of the Himalayas.
Government officials in the area said they found cracks in at least 500 houses in the town and steps are being taken to provide all assistance to the affected people.
Noted Indian geologist Kalachand Sain, who is also Director of Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology in Uttarakhand, told Anadolu Agency that subsidence – the sinking of the land – began a long time back and it is still happening. He cited multiple reasons for the present situation.
“The Joshimath area is already tectonically unstable because the region is lying in seismic zone 5. If you look at the landslide susceptibility and vulnerability of this region, it is also very high. If you look at its geology, it is already vulnerable,” he said, adding the town of Joshimath was built over the debris of an old landslide.
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He said there has been a lot of sub-surface activity happening in the area and the surface pressure has increased due to “human activities and development activities.”
“The high stress accumulated is now getting released in the form of cracks and other ways.”
Uttarakhand, in the western Himalayas, is prone to flash floods and landslides. Floods in June 2013 triggered by heavy monsoon rains killed nearly 6,000 people.
In 2021, a flash flood rushed through a valley in Uttarakhand state, damaging dam project sites and killing over 200 people.
In 2013, a glacial lake outburst flood resulted in the country’s worst natural disaster since a tsunami in 2004 that killed 5,700 people.
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