JOIN USDarjeeling toll 40, rescue work on
The administration seems to have finally woken up and taken note of the gravity of the recent landslides on Darjeeling hills, with the toll touching 40.
With experts often blaming uncontrolled urbanisation for making the Darjeeling hills unstable, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has now instructed the local administration not to allow rampant construction in the area.
The toll in Wednesday’s landslides went up to 40 on Friday as a body was recovered from Mirik. Another 16 are still missing. A senior state disaster management department official said rescue operations are still underway at Kalimpong, Kurseong and Mirik.
District Magistrate Anurag Srivastava said roads buried by minor landslides have been cleared, but the ones with major damage, including the Siliguri-Kalimpong route, will take some time.
Meanwhile, Banerjee, who visited affected sites near Mirik on Thursday evening, asked officials of the autonomous hill council Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) not to allow unchecked construction.
“Houses and tall buildings shouldn’t come up in an unscientific manner. I’ve asked GTA authorities to monitor all new construction,” she said.
The chief minister, who seemed to have done her homework, pointed out that Darjeeling’s quaint wooden bungalows have given way to concrete high rises, whose result was reflected in the recent calamity.
Stating that the September 2011 earthquake in Sikkim and the recent one in Nepal should be eye-openers, Banerjee said her government would take immediate steps to redress the situation. “The state authorities will write to the Centre to send a Geological Survey of India (GSI) team to Darjeeling,” she said.
Banerjee also called for strict monitoring of all construction activities, and asked that building rules be strictly followed.
Sources in the administration said the GSI has reportedly issued several warnings as to how the Darjeeling hills are a ticking time bomb and that mindless construction has made them unstable.
Landslides are a regular feature, and even a small earthquake is enough to destroy homes and property, the agency has reportedly warned.
Expert warnings
The Centre for Himalayan Studies under the North Bengal University had warned of the growing crisis at Darjeeling hills owing to unchecked urbanisation in a 2013 report. BITS Mesra's environment management department had drawn similar conclusions in a separate study.
Three prominent environment NGOs working in Darjeeling and parts of the eastern Himalayas added to the chief minister’s concerns by calling for an immediate end to “irresponsible construction activities” in the region.
Functionaries of the Himalaya Forest Villagers Organisation, Uttar Banga Van-Jan Sramajibi Manch and NESPON pointed out that over the last two decades, the hills have been “irresponsibly and systematically ravaged in the name of economic development and to serve the interests of a section of corrupt political leaders, contractors, construction and power companies”.
NESPON's Soumitra Ghosh said: “This has been on the anvil for a long time. We and other groups in the region have kept saying in vain that the fragile ecology here can’t support big towns of concrete or construction activities like large hydel plants. Even roads can’t be widened repeatedly without damaging hill slopes—the stability factor.”