State offers to foot chopper bill for tourist rescue

KOLKATA: The state government has asked the Uttaranchal government to use helicopters to rescue the Bengal tourists stranded because of landslides and flood. The state government is even ready to foot the bill for the chopper, said home secretary Samar Ghosh on Friday.
He admitted, however, that the weather is very rough and Army choppers are not being able to conduct rescue sorties everywhere.Ghosh said around hundred tourists were stranded at Sangla valley in Himachal Pradesh.
State ministers Kanti Ganguly and Srikumar Mukherjee held meetings with Army officials in Delhi on Friday.
Many tourists are stranded in Kinnaur and an airlift is being planned, he said. "So far, 40 people have been brought back to Simla," said Ghosh, adding that not more than three sorties could be conducted.
He said around another hundred tourists are stranded in Uttarkashi and that the state government was trying to make arrangements for them to be brought to Haridwar.
Ghosh said some of the tourists, who had been contacted over telephone, had complained of inadequacy of food and medicine and for that, the state government is trying an early rescue. Payel Mukherjee of Kalyani, whose father-in-law is now stranded in Sangla, said: "They do not have enough money to return and they are facing acute problem of water and medicine."
Three trekkers, N P Rao, Anal Das and Ankur Adak, are said to be stranded somewhere between Seta and Basukital since September 16. Already, a team of experts have been sent on behalf of the state government. Similarly, five other trekkers are also missing. They are probably somewhere on the Har-ki-Dhoon-Uttarkashi route. These five are also missing since mid-September.
Meanwhile, railway minister Mamata Banerjee said in Kolkata on Friday that the railways has been instrumental in rescuing state tourists stranded in Uttaranchal.
She said the railways has requisitioned helicopters with help from the National Disaster Management Authority. Four helicopters, among them two MI-17s and two Chetaks, obtained from the Air Force and the Army, were carrying out sorties to rescue stranded tourists. These helicopters have been carrying out rescue missions for the past four days.
Five tourists of a group of eight stranded in the upper reaches of Gangotri had already been rescued and brought to Dehradun. Contact could also be established with three others of the group who had been trekking.
The railways had also arranged to set up makeshift camps for tourists who have been brought down from the mountains, she said. Tickets were also being arranged for them. On Friday, train tickets were arranged for 31 tourists.