CHENNAI: Around 100 of the nearly 319 people from Tamil Nadu who travelled to Nepal remained untraceable following the flash floods there, state Information Minister A Rajmohan said.The remaining 219 people have been traced and are safe, he added.Explaining the action taken to bring the Tamil pilgrims stranded in Nepal and nearby territories falling under China, Rajmohan said that over the past three days, he and his Cabinet colleagues had been in New Delhi, as directed by chief minister C Joseph Vijay, to coordinate the rescue efforts.Referring to discussions with the Foreign Secretary, Rajmohan, accompanied by Agriculture minister R Vinoth, said 319 people had travelled in different groups to Himalayan destinations before the floods struck.Of the 319 people, around 219 had been traced and were safe, while the remaining were still untraceable and missing, he said.“This is an international catastrophe, a massive disaster, and the gravity of it is enormous,” he told news agency PTI at the Chennai airport late on Saturday.The scale and impact of the disaster are such that belongings of those affected by the floods could be found hundreds of kilometres from the site of the incident.Amid challenging conditions, military personnel and first responders have been conducting rescue operations using multiple methods, including helicopters.More than 15,000 military personnel, who are trained for such incidents, are carrying out these rescue operations, and the effort continues, he said.“Some unclaimed bodies have been recovered. Until the identification process is fully completed and officially declared, we cannot jump to any conclusions,” he underlined.Emphasising that there are stories of people surviving even four to five days following the disaster, he said, “At this moment, we must not lose hope and faith.”The minister gave a rough break-up of the 300-plus persons who travelled from Tamil Nadu to the Himalayan nation in various groups.He also gave a tentative plan for the survivors to return to Tamil Nadu.In Thanjavur, the son of Anbalagi, an elderly woman who had travelled to Mount Kailash on a pilgrimage, told reporters that officials had informed him that the bus carrying his mother had not yet been traced.He said: “The government is helping… We understand from Embassy officials in Kathmandu that the bus in which my mother travelled has to be traced along a distance of about 150 kilometres. This is the huge difficulty, and the bus is yet to be traced. That is the problem.”He urged the Central and state governments to step up efforts. He became emotional as he expressed his anguish at not being able to establish the whereabouts of his mother or whether she was alive.Living without knowing whether his mother was alive or not was very painful, he said.“I am getting mentally prepared to accept the outcome of searches, but the result is eluding us. Nothing is known about the people who went on the Kailash yatra from Thanjavur,” he said.In Chennai, minister P Venkataramanan visited the relatives of six persons who are among those still missing.After meeting them at suburban Chrompet, he told reporters that regions along the Nepal-China border had become nearly inaccessible in view of heavy damage to infrastructure.He said all efforts were being made to trace the missing people. The whereabouts of the six persons from Chrompet, who belong to one family, and one more person-said to be a representative of a travel company in Chennai-are yet to be ascertained. They are among the roughly 100 people from Tamil Nadu yet to be traced.In a social media post, MDMK leader and Lok Sabha MP Durai Vaiko said he visited, on August 29, the family of a resident of his Tiruchirappalli Parliamentary constituency, Vimala (50), who is stranded in Nepal.“Out of the five individuals from my constituency who are stranded in Nepal, Mrs Karthika Rajmohan (62), Mrs Sivaranjani Muthunathan (46), and Mrs Vallinayagi Sivakumar (61) have already been safely rescued. Currently, it is not possible to contact the two individuals, Mrs Vimala (50) and Mrs Ganga Sundarambal (67),” he said.He urged the union government to safely rescue everyone, including Vimala, and reunite them with their families. He added that he was continuing his efforts to coordinate their rescue.Twenty-one Tamil Nadu pilgrims arrived at the airport late on the night of August 28 and were received by state ministers N Anand (Rural Development and Water Resources) and D Sarathkumar (Human Resources and Management).Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu minister for Non-Resident Tamils Welfare K Thennarasu has stayed back in Delhi to coordinate the rescue operations. The state government immediately set up a war room to assist the families of those affected, Rajmohan said.Rajmohan and Vinoth returned to Chennai late on Saturday night from the national capital.(With agency inputs)
