Uttarakhand Kranti Dal to launch agitation for relocation of disaster-prone villages

The Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (UKD) on Thursday threatened to launch an agitation if the government does not relocate around 600 disaster-prone villages in the hilly areas of the state.

Accusing successive governments of neglecting the issue, UKD president Kashi Singh Airy said his party's executive committee will hold a meeting in Dehradun next week to finalise its programme.

''Despite being identified as sensitive from disaster point of view, successive state governments have been neglecting their resettlement for a long time due to which the villagers are dying in calamities every year,'' Airy, who visited the rain-hit Jumma village in Dharchula area of the district, told PTI on his return.

''For us, lives of our people is a priority. Former chief minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank had assured us that the process to resettle all disaster affected villages will begin soon but nothing was done,'' he said.

He also suggested that villages vulnerable to disasters should be relocated to forest land in the Terai region or plains and the vacated villages could be given to the forest department.

Airy is a senior leader of the UKD which is credited with spearheading the movement for a separate Uttarakhand in the 1990s.

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