‘Dharali like disaster…’: Experts warn of risks in Chardham highway widening

Two members of a Supreme Court-appointed panel have warned that the Chardham all-weather road widening project in Uttarakhand, if pursued in its current form, could trigger consequences similar to the recent Dharali disaster. In a letter to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways on Tuesday, senior geologist Navin Juyal and environmentalist Hemant Dhyani said the project’s “uniform 10 m widening…on the valley side slopes both in lesser and higher Himalayas has created multiple new chronic zones along the widened roads.” 

They urged the adoption of an alternate Detailed Project Report they submitted nearly two years ago for the Bhagirathi Eco Sensitive Zone (BESZ), calling it a “flexible and disaster-resilient road widening design” that would “ensure minimum tree felling and tampering with the slopes” and “definitely minimise the damages caused due to road widening in the Himalayas.”

The Chardham all-weather road project is a 889-km highway network in Uttarakhand aimed at providing year-round connectivity to four major pilgrimage sites – Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath, and Badrinath. This infrastructure upgrade seeks to enhance both religious tourism and strategic access in the fragile Himalayan region.

BESZ covers 4,179.59 sq km from Gomukh to Uttarkashi, including Dharali, through which parts of the Chardham road project pass. Juyal and Dhyani were both members of the Supreme Court-appointed expert committee; Juyal has since left, but Dhyani remains. Citing the “sensitivity of Higher Himalaya towards extreme weather events like landslide lake outburst floods,” the letter recommended “a sustainable and flexible approach” in the BESZ stretches.

“We have been warning and protesting continuously for an alternative sustainable approach to ensure a disaster-resilient highway. But so far authorities have not given any consideration to our appeal,” the experts wrote.

Their recommendations include scrapping the proposed Netala bypass near Uttarkashi, which they say would cut through “pristine forest grown on old landslide deposits…incised by rainfed streams” and risk “slope instability and subsidence.” At least 6,000 trees are marked for felling between Jhala and Jangla for a 10-km stretch, which they warn “would certainly destabilise the avalanche debris and could make the…stretch extremely unstable.”

In their alternative plan, the experts proposed routing sections towards the river flank using elevated corridors and high-elevation bridges “so that the boulders that are usually transported during the ice-rock avalanches can be bypassed.” Such bridges were proposed opposite Harshil “where we lost our jawans and Dharali where the human loss is yet to be estimated.”

On the August 5 Dharali flash floods, they said, “There has been an explosion in tourist influx in the upper Ganga catchment in recent years and to meet the requirements, widespread proliferation of new construction took place defying all the rules.”

“Dharali falls in the Bhagirathi Eco-sensitive Zone. The catastrophe there is a result of authorities ignoring repeated scientific warnings about the vulnerability of such fragile Himalayan locations and violation of legal provisions made under the BESZ notification which ban construction and development activities on slopes in proximity to rivers and streams,” Dhyani told PTI. He added that state authorities also violated the Namami Gange notification “which prohibits construction of both permanent and temporary nature in the flood plain areas of the Ganga or its tributaries.”

The Kheer Ganga flash flood demolished almost half of Dharali, razing hotels and homestays and leaving more than 60 people missing. The river, originating from a cirque glacier, meets the Bhagirathi near the Kalp Kedar temple, which was buried in debris. “Even after the Kedarnath disaster, people were not discouraged to vacate the stream proximal locations,” the experts noted. “Instead, an RCC wall was constructed… This encouraged people to build the resorts and hotels next to the stream.”