57 women among untraced pilgrims

AP government on Sunday called off the biggest ever rescue operation undertaken by it outside the State

As many as 57 out of the 81 untraced Char Dham Yatra AP pilgrims in Uttarakhand were found to be women after cross-checking by Disaster Management officials.

The number of untraced AP pilgrims is stable at 81 as no more information has been received by officials. Ranga Reddy district accounted for the largest number of missing pilgrims at 33 followed by Krishna (14) and Hyderabad (8).

In Uttarakhand, the AP Government on Sunday disbanded the biggest ever rescue and relief operation undertaken by it outside the State after the last batch of 40 stranded pilgrims were airlifted from Badrinath to Joshimath in a 30-minute operation. The sun shone in the area after two days of intermittent heavy rains.

From there, they were brought by road to Dehradun, 330 km away. They were being issued air tickets to reach New Delhi first by regular flight and from there to Hyderabad.

Regular flights were used to bring an earlier batch of 40 pilgrims to Hyderabad. Mr. Radha told this correspondent that they had wound up the camps in all the sectors— Badrinath, Gangotri, Yamunotri, after ascertaining that not a single stranded AP pilgrim remained there now. Similarly, the two helicopters hired so far were disengaged. All the 25 officials, who camped for 10 days till now at Dehradun, and senior IAS officer Adityanath Das, who oversaw operations at New Delhi, are returning to Hyderabad today.

Mr. Radha said the helpdesk and relief camp at A.P Bhavan in Delhi, however, would continue for some more days as there were chances of untraced pilgrims contacting it. N. V. Ramana Reddy, special secretary (Political), would stay back at the Bhavan. The gesture of granting a sum of Rs. 10 crore to the Uttarakhand government towards rescue and relief work made by Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy was well-appreciated by the Uttarakhand officials at Dehradun. Some AP pilgrims who reached Dehradun, expressed happiness that he had also granted Rs. 40 crore to build pilgrims’ amenities centres at Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunotri and Gangotri on the lines of Andhra ashrams run by Chinna Jeear Swamy at Badrinath.