Shimla, Oct 7 (PTI) Shimla mayor Surender Chauhan has requested the Supreme Court to include representatives of local bodies in a proposed committee to study the carrying capacity of Himalayan states in the wake of recent disasters.

Last month, the Centre had urged the Supreme Court to direct 13 Himalayan states and Union territories to assess their carrying capacity and proposed setting up of an expert panel to evaluate the action plans submitted by each of them.

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Carrying capacity is the maximum population size that an ecosystem can sustain without getting degraded.

In an application to the Supreme Court, Chauhan said the states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand suffered the most due to disasters during the monsoon and the elected representatives of local bodies were in a better position to know the ground realities.

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Chauhan told PTI on Saturday that any committee of inquiry on the carrying capacity of Himalayan states must elicit the opinion of local people and elected representatives as they are better versed with the nature of disasters, their causes and remedies.

Lack of concern of previous governments regarding vulnerability of the Himalayas has provoked the citizens to seek the intervention of the Supreme Court where a petition has been filed by a retired IPS officer asking the Union government to suggest a way forward regarding the carrying capacity of the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR), he said.

"We must avoid repeating past mistakes and fully engage with the people of the Himalayas to prevent long-term and short-term disasters to their lives as current proposals of the central and state governments to tackle the crisis are wholly inadequate and misplaced as no opportunity was provided to local bodies to have their say," he said and demanded a 30 per cent representation of the local people in the proposed committee.

As many as 305 people were killed in rain-related incidents in Himachal Pradesh during the monsoon season from June 24 till September 30. The state witnessed 179 landslides and 72 flash floods. Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu had claimed that the state suffered losses to the tune of Rs 12,000 crore.

(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)