At least 26 pilgrims from Madhya Pradesh were on Tuesday killed and 17 injured when a bus carrying them fell into the Ganga river at Kodiyala, near Byasi in Tehri district, the police said.
The mishap occurred on Tuesday afternoon when the private tourist bus, carrying 45 passengers, was going to Rishikesh from Badrinath and fell into the river while trying to overtake a truck, said Tehri superintendent of police Janmejaya Khanduri.
While 21 people died on the spot, five succumbed to their injuries on the way to hospital, he said.
All the bodies have been recovered during a rescue operation, he said. The injured were admitted to Rishikesh government hospital and the condition of five of them was stated to be critical, Mr Khanduri said.
The pilgrims belonged to Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh.
Announcing a magisterial inquiry into the accident, Uttarakhand CM Vijay Bahuguna also asked the administration to provide an ex-gratia of `1 lakh to the next of kin of each of the deceased and `50,000 to each injured person. Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan has also announced ex-gratia compensation of `1lakh for the families of the pilgrims.
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Large afghan footprint counter-productive: Obama
US President Barack Obama (from left), Nato secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari talk during a family picture of Nato leaders at the Nato Summit in Chicago on Monday. The US and Pakistan are making “diligent progress” on reopening the vital Nato supply routes to Afghanistan, President Obama said, while asking Pakistan to work with the world community to ensure that it is “not consumed by extremism that is in their midst”, PTI reports. Mr Obama had a brief meeting with his Pakistani counterpart, Mr Zardari, on the margins of the Nato Summit. The US President said having a large footprint in Afghan-istan can be “counter-productive” in the long run and that it was time to pull back troops and turn attention to domestic woes, as Nato agreed on a 2014 end to the Afghan mission. Mr Obama said a decade of presence in a foreign country can not only cause a strain on the troops but also to the local population. — AP