Uttarakhand chief minister Vijay Bahuguna announced a slew of measures for the flood-affected victims.
These included the identification of land banks where those who had been rendered homeless by the calamity could be rehabilitated.
The first priority will be to identify women who had lost their husbands so that women-centric vocational schemes could help them become breadearners as also providing them with a pension. The state government has also decided to set up foodgrain banks in 30 places from where people can procure grain. The chief minister conceded that there was a major foodgrain shortage which he said often accompanied tragedies of this scale.
The task of paying compensation to the kin of those who went missing had been completed for 70 per cent of the people while the remaining 30 per cent of missing families will receive compensation soon.
Asked whether the number of missing had gone up, Mr Bahuguna replied, “The number stands where it was. None of those declared missing has surfaced and for all practical purposes they may be presumed to be dead.”
Expressing satisfaction at the pace of relief and rehabilitation in the state, AICC general secretary in-charge of party affairs Ambika Soni said the state government had done very well to take up the challenge of completing the cleanup operations at Kedarnath and resume prayers at the shrine by September 11. The state government had decided to fix this date in consultation with an eight-member Badrinath-Kedarnath Temple Committee (BKTC) but, for the present, no pilgrims will be allowed to fly to Kedarnath.
State chief secretary Subhash Kumar said he had asked the Rudraprayag district magistrate Dilip Jawalkar to identify alternate pedestrian routes to Kedarnath by using the help of the Uttarakhand Space Application Centre.