Sunday, 29 January 2023 | PNS | DEHRADUN
Following the footsteps of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), the State Disaster Management and Rehabilitation department has asked different scientific institutions working in land subsidence affected Joshimath to take prior permission from it before sharing any opinion or comment on Joshimath.
In a letter to the director general of the Geological Survey of India (GSI), Dehradun, directors of National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad, Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Dehradun, National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad, Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, National Seismological Centre, New Delhi and Uttarakhand Space Application Centre, Dehradun, the State’s Disaster Management and Rehabilitation, secretary Ranjit Kumar Sinha has said that they should take prior approval either from the respective central ministries or from the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority (USDMA) before publishing or uploading any information or report on Joshimath. The secretary evoked powers under clause 24 of the Disaster Management Act of 2005 for the order. The letter mentions that the objective of the order is to prevent a situation of panic in the community.
The directive of the Uttarakhand government comes in the wake of the gag order issued earlier by the NDMA to the institutes working in Joshimath. In the order it has asked the institutes not to hold interaction with media and share information and reports on the social media regarding land subsidence in Joshimath.
