Explore Business Standard
Don’t miss the latest developments in business and finance.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Kedarnath and Badrinath on Friday during which he will inspect various ongoing development works and also lay foundation stones for some new projects. In view of the visit, security arrangements have been tightened in the area, an official said. While the officials are busy finalizing the preparations for the two-day program of the prime minister, the priests of both the Dhams and the devotees are also excited by his arrival. Both Kedarnath and Badrinath temples are decorated with many quintals of flowers. The Prime Minister will reach Kedarnath at around eight Friday morning and will perform worship of Baba Kedar. After it, he will lay the foundation stone of the 9.7 km long Gaurikund-Kedarnath ropeway project. During his two-and-a-half-hour program, he will also visit the Samadhi Sthal of Adi Guru Shankaracharya. The prime minister will also review the progress of development works along Mandakini Asthapath and Saraswati Asthapath there. A
The recent avalanche near Draupadi Ka Danda-II peak that killed at least 26 mountaineers in Uttarkashi district has triggered a debate among scientists and experts about the contributing factors. While there is no unanimous view on the possible reasons, most of them feel attributing the avalanche to a mild earthquake that rocked Uttarkashi two days earlier was incorrect. The tremor, measuring 2.5 on the Richter scale, hit Uttarkashi on October 2. It was too mild and its epicentre too far from the avalanche site, said a scientist at Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology here. "The mild-intensity earthquake occurred two days before the avalanche and its epicentre was in a village whose aerial distance from the peak is around 25 km," Manish Mehta, a scientist at the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology here said. "So it is least likely that the avalanche was caused by the earthquake." One expert attributed the avalanche to higher snowfall in the region. Snowfall in the upper Himalaya
The murder case of Ankita Bhandari that shook the entire country is being investigated from all angles with total promptness so that her killers can be sent to the gallows as soon as possible, a high-ranked police official said here on Wednesday. Bhandari, a 19-year-old receptionist at a resort near Rishikesh in Uttarakhand, was allegedly killed by the resort owner and two of his accomplices. The official said the three accused, including resort owner Pulkit Arya, were arrested within 24 hours of the matter being handed over to the regular police force from revenue police on September 22. "A special investigation team (SIT) headed by a DIG-level officer is fast collecting the shreds of evidence on the basis of which we can plead for the hanging of the accused in the court of law," he said, requesting anonymity. Rubbishing allegations that the accused are being shielded by destroying evidence related to the case in the garb of demolishing parts of the resort, he said there has been
A woman went missing and 28 houses in Khotila village in Uttarakhand's Pithoragarh district were inundated after a cloudburst triggered a flashflood in the Kali river in the early hours of Saturday, officials said. The cloudburst occurred past midnight in Bangabagar village across the India-Nepal border, causing a flashflood in the Kali river whose raging waters mixed with debris gushed into 28 houses in Khotila, a village on the Indian side of the border, Pithoragarh District Magistrate Ashish Chauhan said. One woman went missing in Khotila village but there are no reports yet of any casualties, he said. The affected area on the Nepal side received 132.2 mm of rain, the DM said. Pithoragarh District Disaster Management Officer Bhupendra Singh Mahar said some animals belonging to the villagers have also been lost. The administration of the border town of Dharchula is running rescue operation on the spot with the help of State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and police personnel, Ma