Landslide in Kinnaur pushes truck into nullah, 2 killed

SHIMLA: A landslide in Kinnaur district resulted in the death of two persons as a huge mound of earth fell on their vehicle on Chulling-Tapri road on Wednesday night. The ill-fated Tata-407 truck was on its way to Rampur from Pooh.
According to sources, as the vehicle reached near Meeru on Chulling-Tapri road via landslide-prone Urni village, a big mound of earth fell on it, pushing it into the nullah.The deceased have been identified as Surender Kumar (22) and Sarjit Kumar (23) of Sui Dhar. Fire brigade personnel retrieved the bodies from the gorge after intense efforts as the truck was badly crushed. After conducting a postmortem, the bodies have been handed over to family members, sources said.
Landslide at Urni village has become a major problem, posing a threat not only to the village but also to the strategically important Hindustan-Tibet road, sources said. Around 256 bighas of land of farmers in Urni have already developed cracks and has come under landslide threat. State revenue minister Kaul Singh Thakur had admitted in the state assembly during the recently concluded monsoon session that hills in Kinnaur district were very fragile and hydro power projects coming up in the district were causing damage to villages, posing a big problem.
In a letter to chief minister Virbhadra Singh, Kinnaur residents had demanded a permanent solution to the landslide problem in Urni area and also to ensure smooth flow of traffic on national highway, which is blocked for the last three months.
Discussing the bottleneck on Shimla-Kinnaur national highway during a recent meeting, CM Vibhadra Singh had promised to find a permanent solution to the landslide zone near Urni. He had said that the practice of sprinkler and Kuhl irrigation should be discouraged in the fragile zones of Kinnaur district as this was being seen as a major reason for landslips, besides the blasting undertaken by various companies to construct tunnels which had further shaken the fragile hills of Kinnaur.