Coordinated efforts are being made to rescue the 40 workers trapped inside a tunnel in Uttarakhand for over 48 hours.

The rescue teams have made little headway in cutting down the rocks that fell over a 200-meter area, trapping the workers inside the tunnel.

Rescuers are trying to create an escape passage to reach the trapped workers and the distance is about 40 metres. Officials said around 21 metres of slab blocking the tunnel has been removed and a 19 metres passage is yet to be cleared.

The team had initially been able to cut through 30 meters of rocks but some soil fell again, so they have been able to clear 21 meters.

The loose debris, which is delaying the rescue operations, is being stabilised and excavation with shotcreting for 40 meters of the collapsed tunnel has started.

Shotcreting is a term for spraying concrete at high velocity over a structure.

The rescue teams are planning to push a pipe with a 900 mm diameter using a hydraulic jack by boring a hole into the heap of debris to evacuate the trapped workers. Rescuers will use auger machines to drill a hole in the debris.

All the material and machinery needed for the daring operation has been brought to the site. Experts from the irrigation department have also joined the operation.

Videos from the spot showed huge piles of concrete blocking the tunnel, twisted metal bars from its broken roof buried in rubble creating more obstacles for rescue workers – who are mostly migrants from Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

The workers got trapped in the tunnel on Sunday morning after the under construction structure on the Brahmakhal-Yamunotri National Highway. 

The workers – who have been trapped in a buffer zone – are unharmed and are being supplied with food and oxygen through water pipelines. “They have a buffer of around 400 metres to walk and breathe,” a Disaster response official said.

The rescue teams have successfully established communication with the workers with Walkie-Talkies. Initial contact was made via a note on a scrap of paper, but later rescuers managed to connect using radio handsets.

The 4.5-km tunnel on the Brahmakhal-Yamunotri National Highway, which will join Silkyara and Dandalgaon in Uttarkashi, is part of the Chardham project. Once finished, it is expected to cut down the distance by 26 km.

Initial reports suggest that a landslide in the region triggered the collapse, however, officials say that investigation is on to ascertain the exact reason for the collapse.

The United States-China could easily veer towards a conflict if it is not well managed, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has said ahead of the much-anticipated meeting between US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. Biden and Xi are scheduled to meet in San Francisco on Wednesday on the sidelines of the APEC Leadership meeting. The White House is calling it a summit.

Sullivan on Monday said the US president has the opportunity to engage, so do the rest of his team, on how they effectively manage peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. “Those are some of the issues that, through intense diplomacy, we have been able to manage,” he said.

“Then will look for opportunities to actually generate affirmative outcomes that deliver tangible progress for the American people in areas where our interests overlap. I mentioned, for example, the issue of fentanyl.

“We’re hoping to see some progress on that issue this coming week, and that could then open the door to further cooperation on other issues where we aren’t just managing things, but we’re actually delivering tangible results,” Sullivan said. The US National Security Advisor said the most important thing is that “this is a complex and a competitive relationship that could easily veer into conflict or confrontation if it’s not well managed”.

“So, managing the relationship effectively is the single most important responsibility of the president and everyone who works for him on this file,” Sullivan told reporters at a news conference here.

“Beyond that, the US and China have to be able to speak directly to one another on all of the critical issues that face our two countries, including issues in moments of crisis like the Russia-Ukraine crisis. President Biden has had a number of candid conversations with President Xi about the question of military support to the Russian Federation in the conduct of its war in Ukraine,” he said in response to a question.

During the San Francisco meeting, Sullivan said that he anticipates the leaders will discuss some of the most fundamental elements of the US-China bilateral relationship, including the continued importance of strengthening open lines of communication and managing competition responsibly.

“The way we achieve that is through intense diplomacy. That’s how we clear up misperceptions and avoid surprises. That’s how we work together where and when our interests overlap and deliver on key priorities for the American people,” he said.

Sullivan said in recent months he met Chinese Foreign Minister and PRC Director of the CCP Central Foreign Affairs Commission Wang Yi thrice, and top US secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce all went to Beijing.

“China for its part sent its vice president, foreign minister and other senior officials to the United States in recent months. President Biden comes into this summit on a solid footing, given the ways in which he has positioned the United States to be able to compete effectively both at home and around the world,” the US National Security Advisor said.

Responding to questions, Sullivan talked about having lines of communication open to manage competition responsibly.

“That’s what the (US) president has set out to achieve in this summit with President Xi. He sees this not just as a one-off meeting, but as an important moment to be able to establish the kind of basis upon which we can proceed out into the future,” Sullivan added.

Cracks are now more prominent in the Opposition’s INDIA alliance with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav questioning why the previous Congress-led governments did not conduct caste census when they were in power.

Mr Yadav’s comment highlights the differences between the two parties that are part of the mega Opposition front seeking to put up a united fight against the BJP in next year’s national elections.

The previous governments did not act on this due to their faulty policies, he told ANI in Satna in election-bound Madhya Pradesh and taunted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over his “X-ray” remark over the caste census demand.

At a rally yesterday, Mr Gandhi reiterated his call for caste census and termed the exercise an “X-ray” that would give details of various communities in the country. Asked about this, Mr Yadav said the Congress’s demand for a caste census is a “miracle”.

#WATCH | Satna, Madhya Pradesh: On Rahul Gandhi’s statement, SP Chief Akhilesh Yadav says, “…Congress is the party which did not conduct caste census after independence… When all the parties in the Lok Sabha were demanding a caste census, they did not conduct a caste census.… pic.twitter.com/aYEaUU9SwT

— ANI (@ANI) November 13, 2023

“X-ray was the need of that time. Now we have MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and CT (computed tomography) scan. The disease has now spread. If this problem was solved back then, such a gap wouldn’t have existed in the society today,” he said mocking Mr Gandhi.

“The biggest miracle is the Congress is also talking about caste census. Those who are talking about X-rays are the same people who stopped the caste census after Independence,” he quipped.

Mr Yadav slammed the Congress for not conducting caste census after India attained independence. “When Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav), Sharad Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav, and parties from South India raised the demand in Lok Sabha, the Congress refused to do it,” he said.

“Why do they want to conduct caste census today? Because they know that their traditional vote bank is not with them. But the backward classes, Dalit, and adivasis know that they had betrayed them after Independence,” he added.

Mr Yadav has been training his guns at the Congress lately and has also claimed that the grand old party does not want to ally with his outfit after their relations soured over seat-sharing for the November 17 Madhya Pradesh elections.

Last week, he said the Congress did not implement the Mandal Commission recommendations and had opposed the caste census. In another instance, he told a rally in Madhya Pradesh that neither Congress nor BJP have done anything for the poor and farmers when they were in power in the state.

However, despite the signs of strain, he told NDTV last month that his party was still a part of the INDIA bloc.