{"id":303291,"date":"2018-09-26T05:55:16","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T05:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=303291"},"modified":"2018-09-26T20:18:05","modified_gmt":"2018-09-26T20:18:05","slug":"himachal-seeks-army-help-500-stranded-in-lahaul-spiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/himachal-seeks-army-help-500-stranded-in-lahaul-spiti\/","title":{"rendered":"Himachal seeks army help, 500 stranded in Lahaul-Spiti"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-303292 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Screenshot_20180926-222109__01-300x209.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"209\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/09\/Screenshot_20180926-222109__01-300x209.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/09\/Screenshot_20180926-222109__01-768x535.jpg 768w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/09\/Screenshot_20180926-222109__01-1024x713.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/09\/Screenshot_20180926-222109__01-100x70.jpg 100w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/09\/Screenshot_20180926-222109__01-696x485.jpg 696w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/09\/Screenshot_20180926-222109__01-1068x744.jpg 1068w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/09\/Screenshot_20180926-222109__01-603x420.jpg 603w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/09\/Screenshot_20180926-222109__01.jpg 1080w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Himachal Pradesh government on Tuesday sought an immediate help from the Indian army to take-up an aerial operation to rescue nearly 500 tourists including 45 students of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee who were stranded at two different locations in Lahaul-Spiti district across 13059 feet Rohtang Tunnel after heavy snowfall in past 24 hours.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur who flew to Kullu this morning alongwith a team of senior officials, beside two cabinet ministers \u2013Govind Thakur (Transport and forest) and Dr Ram Lal Markanda (Agriculture ) said nearly 300 tourists were stranded at Kokar and another 200 at Baracha La .Efforts were underway to organise a rescue operation and airlift the tourists.Tere is also a report of one person having died ,he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Himachal Pradesh\u00a0\u00a0witnessed massive rains in past four days, resulting in eight deaths and massive destruction of public and private property. More than 160 roads and Chandigarh \u2013Manali National Highway have remained closed .<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Landslides\u00a0\u00a0also resulted in obstruction of Pawarnoo-Shimla National Highway briefly while district administration deploy massive machinery to clear the debris. A major portion of the Highway ,which is undergoing four-lanning work also caved in on Monday evening<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Three districts \u2013Kullu, Lahaul-Spiti and Chamba have been worst affected by the rains and flash floods .<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Three Indian airforce helicopters have reaced Kullu for rescue of all stranded tourists.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Deputy Commissioner Kullu Yunus said 45 students of IIT Roorkee were safe. They\u00a0 had gone trekking in Himachal Pradesh&#8217;s mountainous Lahaul and Spiti district<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">&#8220;The group of 50 trekkers which includes IIT-Roorkee students are safe,&#8221; \u00a0Chief Minister told Tehelka.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Jairam Thakur said this is first time after 1955 that Lahaul-Spiti had witnessed snow fall throwing the life out of gear. This has caught the goverment totally unaware. The Rohtang Pass also remains closed .<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Reports said two foreign nationals, who were caught in a bad weather on Monday \u00a0in Lahaul-Spiti were rescued by the Air Force.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">In all 45 deaths have taken place in Himachal Pradesh since July 2018 due to monsoon rains.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Himachal Pradesh government on Tuesday sought an immediate help from the Indian army to take-up an aerial operation to rescue nearly 500 tourists including 45 students of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee who were stranded at two different locations in Lahaul-Spiti district across 13059 feet Rohtang Tunnel after heavy snowfall in past 24 hours. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":303292,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2898,2009,2014],"tags":[1340,5199,4258],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303291"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303293,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303291\/revisions\/303293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/303292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}