Vijay Bahuguna to meet Prime Minister tomorrow

Dehradun: Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday to present his government’s estimate of losses caused by last month’s calamity, and attend a meeting of Union Cabinet’s Sub-committee for relief and rehabilitation of flood-hit people.

Defence Minister AK Antony, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde are among the members of the committee headed by Singh.

With the cleaning of the interiors of Kedarnath shrine almost complete, the Chief Minister has convened a meeting of Badri-Kedar Mandir Samiti here on August 2 to finalise a date for resumption of regular prayers.

Efforts are under way to resume prayers at the 8th century shrine at the earliest, Bahuguna told reporters. He said that the state government’s priority is now to transport heavy stone-cutting equipment to Kedarnath area at the earliest to kickstart the debris removal exercise there.