Saturday, 18 November 2023 | PNS | DEHRADUN
The State secretary of the Communist Party of India- Marxist Leninist (CPI-ML) Indresh Maikhuri has said that a criminal case should be registered against the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) for putting the lives of the labourers at risk in the under construction tunnel at Silkyara in Uttarkashi district. Expressing anguish at the delay in the rescue of the labourers stranded in the tunnel since Sunday morning, he said that prima facie the case appears to be of gross neglect by the NHIDCL involved in the construction of the tunnel on the Brahmkhal- Yamunotri road. He said that in the year 2021 the Supreme Court gave permission to the project by stating that best available practices should be adopted in the project but the Silkyara incident suggests that the SC’s advice was not followed. Maikhuri said that it is not the first time when this company has put the lives of people in danger. He claimed that in July 2020, a retaining wall constructed by the company collapsed in Kheda village of Narendranagar in which three children died. Similarly seven labourers died when they got buried under the debris of road construction on December 21, 2018 in Rudraprayag- Gaurikund road. Maikhuri alleged that the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is also responsible for the devastation the State is facing from the unplanned all-weather road. He said that work on the all-weather road started without the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) because the 889 kilometre project was divided into 53 packages.
