A fresh landslide on Friday morning damaged 350 metre of National Highway 109 to Kedarnath. A 200 metre stretch had already been washed away in a landslide that occurred on Wednesday evening, Rudraprayag District Magistrate Raghav Lavangar told The Hindu .
The latest landslip occurred 13 kilometre from Guptkashi towards Sonprayag in Rudraprayag district.Pilgrims and other travellers on the resumed Kedarnath yatra were forced to take a two km detour to re-join the highway. By Friday afternoon around 19 pilgrims and 33 locals had taken the detour to reach Kedarnath.
Mr. Lavangar said, “The yatra to the Kedarnath temple is continuing and people are moving to the other side of the damaged highway by a trek route which passes through the Khat village.”
“There was no rainfall when the landslide occurred on Wednesday evening. However, there was some rainfall today (Friday) morning, ” he added.
Information and Public Relations Director General R. Meenakshi Sundaram said, “On Thursday morning, the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) had started working towards the restoration of the highway that was damaged on Wednesday evening.”
According to Mr. Lavangar, the highway was blocked. "The BRO is doing the road restoration work. The residents of Khat village had some apprehensions regarding the cutting of the rock for restoration work. A retention wall is simultaneously being built to save the land of the villagers from the repercussions of rock cutting for road restoration,” he said.
