The town has undergone unplanned construction, drastic road widening and hydropower projects that have ignored multiple warnings.
Residents of the ancient pilgrim town of Joshimath were forced to flee their homes in the freezing weather of January. Walls had cracked open, while foundations were tilting and sinking in a quarter of the approximately 2,500 buildings in the town. Federal and Uttarakhand state government officials are moving thousands of residents into hotels while halting all work on road widening and a hydropower project. Experts point out that this was a disaster waiting to happen because the authorities ignored multiple warnings over decades about the way roads and hydropower projects were being built.
Kalachand Sain, head of the Dehradun-based Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, said Joshimath – a town 2,000 m above sea level – has always been vulnerable because it sits atop the debris of an old landslide. This has failed to stop a building spree in recent years, with ill-planned construction destabilising the soil and choking underground water channels, so that water starts accumulating under the foundations.
This process has been accelerated manifold by the work to widen the road to Badrinath – another pilgrimage centre higher up in the Himalayas. That road is part of the Char Dham (Four Pilgrimage Centres) road widening project. There have been multiple reports that trees are being cut and natural water channels choked because the project is failing to follow the government’s own principles on how to build a road in a mountain area. The road widening work has now been halted.
11/01/2023