With the onset of monsoon, rivers in Uttarakhand have begun to swell. On Saturday, the raging Alaknanda river gushed through a valley and swept away a bridge which the Hemkund Sahib pilgrims cross for a 20-km trek to the Sikh pilgrimage centre.
Subhash Nautiyal, a shopkeeper who owns a store a few metres away from the destroyed bridge, said, “Everywhere only shoddy reconstruction work is visible. More than disappointment, there is anger in us at the way the authorities and the government have handled the post-disaster reconstruction work.”
However, Chamoli district Magistrate S.A. Murugesan said, “The bridge got swept away on Saturday evening due to the increase in water level in the Alaknanda. But the Hemkund Sahib Yatra was not affected as the pilgrims crossed the river via another makeshift bridge, which is a few metres away.”
Locals and those arranging for the Hemkund Sahib Yatra expressed anger over the delay in constructing a “dependable” bridge on the river. “A permanent bridge would be constructed by the Public Works Department and would be operational by September-end,” Mr. Murugesan said.
Sources handling the reconstruction work at the Govindghat gurdwara for over a year after the June calamity last year destroyed much of the gurdwara premises said, “The PWD could have seen the geography before constructing the bridge. It was evident that a heavy flow in the river would destroy the bridge.”
