New Delhi, Nov 30 (PTI) The Congress' Delhi unit on Thursday felicitated six rat-hole miners from the national capital who were part of a 12-member team that excavated the final 10-12-metre stretch of debris of the collapsed portion of the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand to rescue the 41 labourers trapped inside.

Munna Qureshi and Vakil Hassan, Feroz, Rashid Ansari, Nazim and Irshad -- all residents of Shree Ram Colony in northeast Delhi's Karawal Nagar -- were part of the rescue operation at the tunnel.

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These six rat-hole miners along with their six colleagues risked their lives to rescue the 41 trapped workers and it was the finest example of duty above self, said Arvinder Singh Lovely, the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee chief.

"It was also the greatest example of selfless service that these brave rat-hole miners refused to accept any reward to rescue the trapped workers, whom they considered their own brothers and their as lives as precious as theirs," Lovely said.

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The Congress delegation that felicitated the miners appealed to the central and the Delhi governments to honour them with suitable cash rewards and other facilities to acknowledge their selfless service.

The 41 workers trapped inside the tunnel after a portion of it had collapsed were rescued on Tuesday following 17 days of a multi-agency operation. The 12-member team of rat-hole mining experts were called on Sunday to do the drilling after an American auger machine came across hurdles while clearing the rubble.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)