• UGI USER
  • Dec 01, 2023
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Center authorizes Joshimath, Uttarakhand, a reconstruction plan estimated at more than 1658 crore rupees.

  • After landslides and ground subsidence early this year, Joshimath was given permission by the Center to proceed with a recovery and reconstruction plan worth over 1658 crore rupees.
  • The plan was approved by a High-Level Committee chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
  • Under it, the National Disaster Response Fund’s recovery and reconstruction window will provide about 1080 crore rupees in central assistance.
  • The State Disaster Response Fund of Uttarakhand will contribute more than 126 crore rupees to relief efforts. Approximately 452 crore rupees will also be provided by it from its Budget.
  • The Union Home Ministry said in a statement that the Joshimath recovery plan will be carried out in three years, adhering to sustainability initiatives, best practices, and Build Back Better concepts.

About Joshimath

  • The hilly town of Joshimath is situated in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district along the Rishikesh-Badrinath National Highway (NH-7).
  • The city is a popular tourist destination since it provides an overnight stopover for visitors to the state’s major religious and tourism destinations, including Badrinath, Auli, the Valley of Flowers, and Hemkund Sahib.
  • Additionally, Joshimath is very strategically significant to the Indian armed forces.
  • The town is surrounded by running streams that have a steep gradient from Vishnuprayag, the meeting place of the Dhauliganga and Alaknanda rivers (which fall within the high-risk seismic Zone-V).
  • One of the four cardinal maths or monasteries founded by Adi Shankara—the others being Joshimath near Badrinath in Uttarakhand, Puri in Odisha, Dwarka in Gujarat, and Sringeri in Karnataka—is located there.
NOTE

Earlier this year, Joshimath began to sink due to land subsidence, the locals became alarmed and staged protests.

Land Subsidence:

●   The gradual settling or abrupt sinking of the Earth’s surface is known as land subsidence.

●    The most common causes of subsidence, or the sinking of the ground due to movement of subsurface materials, are mining, fracking, pumping, and the extraction of natural gas, oil, and/or water from the earth.