A major tragedy awaits Mandi district where high salt mountain at Maigal, spread over several kilometres, has started sinking posing existential questions for several cluster of villages.
People are in panic as they still remember August 13, 2017 when over 60 persons of village Kotrurupee, 41 km from Mandi, on the NH-154 had been buried alive and half a dozen of vehicles, had been swept away with the debris. Locals who have seen the sinking site, say that heavy rain can again cause a catastrophe.
The geologists and engineers of the Hindustan Salt Mines are intrigued as Himachal Pradesh government, particularly the Forest Department had taken no preventive measures to arrest soil erosion caused by the melting of the salt despite the fact that centuries old rock salt mines had been buried under huge land slides over the years.