‘3 meals a day for 250 people’: Joshimath Gurdwara providing shelter to land subsidence victims, rescue forces

“Twelve families and around 35 people are living in the rooms of the gurdwara. We will not have any issue in accommodating them till the Hemkunt Sahib yatra begins in the summer. We are hopeful that these families would find a proper shelter by then,” said Seva Singh.

When asked about daily expenditures on making arrangements, he said, “We don’t assess expenditure as it is the langar started by Guru Nanak and it is running only due to his grace. We are no one to calculate the expenditure.”

When asked if the caving in of the land had any effect on the gurdwara, he said, “The gurdwara is in a safe zone for now. But we can’t say anything for sure about what happens in the future. Also, any effect on the next season of the Hemkunt Sahib yatra depends upon the condition of the roads. If roads continue to cave in, then there might be problems. But if things go stable, then I don’t think there would be any issue in the yatra.”

“We don’t have any problem in making urgent arrangements for the victim families and security forces because it is part of our practice to accommodate sometimes more than 500 pilgrims during a day when the yatra is on. Joshimath Gurdwara is like a camp for the Gurdwara Hemkunt Sahib. So we were prepared when the tragedy hit on January 2,” said Seva Singh.

A victim, Gajendra Singh, told The Indian Express over the phone, “I am living at the gurdwara with my two children and wife. Arrangements are very good here. We are thankful to the gurdwara management for their help. But we can’t stay here forever. The government should make arrangements for us so that we can start our life again. For now, everything is shattered for us.”

Almost a week after cracks appeared in many roads and hundreds of houses of Joshimath, authorities last Sunday declared it a landslide and subsidence-hit zone.

Subsidence is the “sinking of the ground because of underground material movement”. The exact reason behind the Joshimath land subsidence is still unknown but experts suggest that the incident might have occurred because of unplanned construction, over-population, obstruction of the natural flow of water and hydel power activities. Not only this, the area is a seismic zone, which makes it prone to frequent earthquakes.

The Supreme Court Monday refused to entertain a plea seeking the apex court’s intervention to declare the crisis in Uttarakhand’s subsidence-hit Joshimath a national disaster.