Silent on construction details, government says Himalayas unstable
“As per information provided by the Uttarakhand government, Joshimath is located on a thick cover of very old landslides material. Large boulders of gneiss and fragments of basic schist rocks are observed to be embedded in grey-coloured silty sandy matrix. The region has been witnessing gradual subsidence. This was also reported by a committee set up under Mahesh Chandra Mishra in 1976,” said minister of earth sciences Jitendra Singh.