The Uttarakhand government has declared that 5,748 people are missing in the flash floods that struck the upper reaches of the state’s Garhwal hills on the night of June 15-16 but refused to accept that they had died.
The Congress government headed by Vijay Bahuguna had said recently that it would consider the missing persons as dead a month after the calamity — by July 15, that is. This would have given an official figure to the number of people — most of them pilgrims and tourists from other states — who died despite the state government having received alerts about the impending disaster on which no action seems to have been taken.
The state government, however, said it was bowing to the wishes of the missing people’s families, who still live on the hope that their loved ones are still alive and will be found one day. Many of them have been putting out ads offering rewards for information about their missing relatives in local papers here.
Along with 924 locals, as many as 4,824 people from other states are missing after the disaster. Most of them belong to Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab and Delhi.
The Congress government headed by Vijay Bahuguna had said recently that it would consider the missing persons as dead a month after the calamity — by July 15, that is. This would have given an official figure to the number of people — most of them pilgrims and tourists from other states — who died despite the state government having received alerts about the impending disaster on which no action seems to have been taken.
The state government, however, said it was bowing to the wishes of the missing people’s families, who still live on the hope that their loved ones are still alive and will be found one day. Many of them have been putting out ads offering rewards for information about their missing relatives in local papers here.
Along with 924 locals, as many as 4,824 people from other states are missing after the disaster. Most of them belong to Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab and Delhi.
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