Declare Joshimath a ‘no new-construction zone’: Central institutes

DEHRADUN: Joshimath far exceeds its carrying capacity and must be declared a zone of “no new constructions”, the National Disaster Management Authority has said in its 130-page ‘Post Disaster Need Assessment’ (PDNA) report on the town’s ‘sinking’. It’s one among eight reports on Joshimath, each by a key central scientific and technical institution, that the state government has not made public for the past several months.
Days after the Uttarakhand HC questioned the state’s decision to keep the reports outside public purview, TOI exclusively accessed their recommendations that were kept ‘secret’ by the government for the past several months.
In January this year, the eight institutions — Central Building Research Institute, Geological Survey of India, Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, National Geophysical Research Institute, Central Ground Water Board, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, National Institute of Hydrology and IIT Roorkee — were given the mandate to ascertain the causes of ground subsidence in the area in and around Joshimath and to carry out remedial measures.

They submitted their preliminary reports to the National Disaster Management Authority towards January-end. The reports were subsequently shared with the state government but were never made public. Last week, copies of the reports were placed in a sealed cover by the state government for the Uttarakhand HC’s consideration.
Among several observations and recommendations made by experts of the premier institutions, the important ones focussed on the town’s carrying capacity and poor construction design and soil bearing capacity. Notably, the town has come up on moraine or loose soil deposited by landslides.
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), in its report said, “Joshimath exceeded its carrying capacity, far beyond its capacity, and the area must be declared as a no-new construction zone.”
As per 2011 census, Joshimath’s population was 16,709, with a density of 1,454 per sq km. The fragile town’s estimated population now stands somewhere between 25,000 and 26,000, as per the district administration. In its 180-page report, the Central Building Research Institute (CBRI) questioned the current construction practices in Joshimath and recommended reviewing the principles of town planning for development of towns here and in similar hilly parts of the Himalayas.
The CBRI concluded that good construction typology, practice, material, regulatory mechanism and awareness were a must among stakeholders based on geo-technical and geo-climatic conditions. In a significant recommendation, the Roorkee-based institution also sought a plan for “phased de-densification of Joshimath and similar locations.”
The Geological Survey of India (GSI) report mentions that the density of the recent ground cracks was more in areas which are densely populated and dotted with multistorey buildings. This has been the case with areas like Manohar Bagh and Singhdhar where a maximum number of ground cracks and damage to civil structures seem to have occurred.
The GSI report said: “The heavy load exerted by a dense construction of towering structures over the heterogenous colluvium debris mass, which is saturated with shallow subsurface water, only accentuated the shear stress on the slope, thus increasing subsidence in these areas.” The cracks that appeared early this year and forced many families to leave their homes, were mostly aligned along a 50-60m wide linear array trending north west-south east of the town covering Sunil village, Manohar Bagh, Singhdhar and Marwari wards — all densely populated.
After the detailed safety assessment of 2,364 buildings in Joshimath, scientists from CBRI had found 20% of the houses “unusable”, 42% requiring “further assessment”, 37% “usable” and 1% as “needs to be demolished”.
The PDNA report prepared by the NDMA-led team, meanwhile, pointed to possible negative impact on the environment from large-scale future reconstruction activities in Joshimath. “It is important that these reconstruction programmes focus on the use of green design, appropriate technologies and confined masonry,” the report added.
The Union government had recently given in-principle approval to a Rs 1,465-crore package for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of Joshimath.