PMO to hold high-level meeting on Joshimath crisis | India News

NEW DELHI: The Prime Minister’s Office will hold a high-level meeting on the Joshimath crisis on Sunday afternoon amid alarm in the Uttarakhand region due to sinking of land and cracks in houses at several places.
P K Mishra, the principal secretary to the prime minister, will hold the review meeting with the cabinet secretary, other senior officials of the central government and members of the National Disaster Management Authority, an official statement said.
District officials of Joshimath besides senior officials of Uttarakhand will also attend the review meeting through video-conferencing.

Uttrakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had visited Joshimath on Saturday to assess the situation on the ground, a day after he directed immediate evacuation of around 600 affected families.
An eight-member expert panel has recommended that “houses in Joshimath with maximum damage should be demolished, areas which have become inhabitable must be identified and relocation of the people at risk should be done as an immediate measure”.
The expert team, which was urgently tasked to assess the damage to buildings and extent of ground subsidence (sinkage) in Joshimath, visited the affected areas during its two-day survey and finalised its report on Saturday, a copy of which is with TOI.

It has observed “aggravated damages” in Sunil, Manohar Bagh, Singhdhar and Marwari areas, as compared to the last field survey just some months ago in August 2022.
Meanwhile, the number of affected structures — residential, commercial and even temples — which have developed large cracks has increased from 561 to 603 within a span of a mere 48 hours. The holy town has been facing massive land-subsidence, aggravated significantly in the past few days.
Joshimath, the gateway to famous pilgrimage sites like Badrinath and Hemkund Sahib and international skiing destination Auli, is facing a major challenge due to land subsidence