Joshimath built and built amid alerts: ISRO maps 5-cm dip in just 12 days

Warning bells rang several times since a government report in 1976 cautioned against heavy construction in the geologically unstable Joshimath area that rests on old landslide debris and moraine above a permanent tectonic zone.

But nothing deterred successive governments at the state and the Centre from bringing mega projects and mass tourism to the area.

While a hydel project is digging a 12-km-long tunnel skirting Joshimath for over a decade, work has also begun in the vicinity on the Chardham road project. Next, Joshimath is due for a railway station under the ambitious plan to establish a broad gauge link to Badrinath. Then there is the unplanned growth of the town itself, primarily to accommodate the ever-increasing rush of pilgrims and tourists.

Beyond capacity

From a sleepy temple town, Joshimath has become a congested tourism hub as the transit point for Badrinath, one of India’s most visited pilgrimage sites.

From under 1 lakh in the 1960s and under 5 lakh in the 1990s, the number of annual visitors to Badrinath increased to 10 lakh in 2012. The disaster in 2013 induced a temporary lull when barely 2 lakh pilgrims turned up in 2014. Since then, the renewed rush scaled new records every successive year — over 12 lakh in 2019 — until Covid struck in 2020.

Restrictions over, the annual crowd swelled to over 17 lakh in 2022. It also helped that the state government increased the daily visitor limit by 1,000 to 16,000 last May to accommodate the rush for online visitor registration for the temple.

Around 30 per cent of Badrinath-bound tourists – over 5,000 in the peak Yatra season – make an overnight stop in Joshimath. In the winter months, Joshimath hosts the bulk of the tourists visiting Auli – it drew over 4 lakh visitors in 2022.

“There are around 200 hotels and homestays in Joshimath and Auli combined. Around 40 per cent of these were either constructed or expanded after 2015 before the Covid period,” said Chamoli district tourism officer Sobat Singh Rana.

There are around 3,900 houses and 400 commercial buildings in the Joshimath area spread across 2.5 sq km. Of these, only 1,790 pay house tax.

“Most of the houses here are constructed without permission. Only those who need loans from banks get the plans passed. We were clearing the house plans until 2018 when the responsibility was transferred to the development authority,” an official at the local municipality said.

An official at the development authority said only 60 new houses have been built in Joshimath since 2018. “The actual numbers, however, are much higher,” he said.

Yet, nobody ever bothered to conduct a carrying capacity study while hotels mushroomed, overburdening the loose earth and the inadequate drainage and sewerage systems of the town.

It took the present crisis for the state to set up a panel of bureaucrats and experts which has recommended a technical study of Joshimath’s carrying capacity by IIT Roorkee and another on the town’s drainage by the National Institute of Hydrology.

A railhead for better access

Taking forward plans to establish broad gauge rail connectivity to Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath, Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL) undertook a Reconnaissance Engineering Survey (REC) in 2014-15. The purpose was to provide round-the-year access to pilgrims and gain strategic advantage in military logistics.

The REC recommended two take-off points – one from the existing station at Doiwala (Dehradun) and another from the upcoming station at Karnaprayag – and a total route length of 327 km for the Rs 43,292-crore Chardham Rail Connectivity Project. One of the 21 new stations, Joshimath was proposed as the railhead for Badrinath.

To connect Gangotri, the plan is to reach Manneri (131 km) from Doiwala via Uttarkashi where another line will fork out to reach Palar (22 km) for Yamunotri. For Kedarnath, the proposed 99-km line will connect Karnaprayag with Sonprayag via Saikot, where a Y-connection will run 75 km to culminate at Joshimath for Badrinath.

Already under construction, the Rishikesh-Karnaprayag segment is scheduled to be opened in 2025.

In 2017, RVNL hired Yuksel Proje, a Turkish consultant, for the Final Location Survey (FLS). Submitted in 2020, the FLS cited major geological challenges to reduce the project scope to 281 km, with 55 viaducts (total length of 8.4 km) and 52 tunnels (total length of 236.5 km or 84% of the total route).

The FLS report, sources said, also flagged that Joshimath did not have adequate land for a railway yard and other logistical requirements. The recommendation, it is learnt, is to terminate the line near Pipalkoti, 35 km short of Joshimath.

Contacted by The Indian Express, a Yuksel executive declined to comment, citing confidentiality.

Ajit Singh Yadav, RVNL’s chief project manager at Rishikesh, said: “Whatever are the issues raised in the report, the competent authority is looking into those.”

A bypass to Badrinath

The 6-km Helong-Marwari bypass was conceived to avoid the traffic clutter along the circuitous route to Joshimath township and reduce the distance to Badrinath by 16 km. For over a year, the bypass faced strong local resistance primarily due its impact on commercial enterprises in Joshimath.

Ecologically though, the upcoming bypass will be beneficial in diverting traffic away from the subsidence zones of Joshimath. Running along the left bank of the Alaknanda river to the north of the Main Central Thrust which traverses through near Helong, the bypass itself will rest on an area composed of hard massive rock.

The bypass was approved on the basis of an assurance by BRO that it would carry out extensive geological, geotechnical and geophysical investigations. The project plan also provides for suitable hill slope protection measures such as a 4.99-km retaining wall, a cut-and-fill approach to reduce debris generation and the disposal problem, 3.86-km breast walls etc.

Due to these factors, the Supreme Court-appointed Chardham panel of experts recommended the bypass for approval with the caveat that even after its construction, the north-bound tourist traffic for Badrinath should move through the Joshimath town to minimise the impact on the local economy.

A tunnel in the works

For over a decade, a 12-km head race tunnel is being built by the NTPC to carry water from the barrage of Tapovan-Vishnugad hydel project to its powerhouse.

As reported by The Indian Express Monday, official records show that since December 2009, there have been a string of “aquifer ingress” events – incidents where the project’s tunnel boring machine (TBM) breaks into the rock that holds groundwater – along this head race tunnel that runs along the edge of the Joshimath town.

In December 2009, records show, the TBM got trapped as “massive surges of high-pressure subsurface water, containing faulted rock material, broke two crown segments of the segmental lining (of the machine) immediately… with the initial flow rates reaching” 700 litres per second.

It took several months to free the TBM but it was again trapped in February and October 2012. It was rescued, refurbished and launched again in 2019. But it could advance only 55 m before it became trapped yet again. The glacial flood hit the project in February 2021. Since then, work on the tunnel and the TBM remained stuck.