DEHRA DUN: Thirty-eight members of a marriage party were killed and twenty- three injured when the bus they were travelling rolled down the hillside at Kameda village near Gochar in Rudraprayag district around 11-30 a.m. on Tuesday.

The marriage party had set out from Maithana village near Srinagar in the morning to go to Karnaprayag for the function. Sixty-one people were on board the bus.

The injured have been admitted in Karnaprayag hospital and the Srinagar hospital.

The critical cases would be referred to Dehra Dun, the State Disaster Management and Mitigation Centre here said.

The overloaded bus was moving at a high speed when the accident happened.

Indo-Tibetan Border Police jawans and local police immediately began rescue operations that ended around 3 p.m.

The bus rolled down about 200 metres before stopping about 10 metres above the river Alaknanda. The toll would have been higher had the vehicle fallen into the river.

Expressing deep shock over the mishap, the Chief Minister, Narayan Dutt Tiwari, announced an ex gratia relief of Rs 50,000 each to the next of kin of those killed and Rs 15,000 each to the injured.

In another accident, three persons were killed and a dozen others, all belonging to a family, were seriously injured when the Tata Sumo they were travelling in fell off the hillside at Shyamkhet in Nainital district on Monday.

The hill roads of Uttaranchal have claimed over 2,000 lives in the past three years. Most of the mishaps were due to overloading or rash driving.

Although the Government makes tall claims of making the roads safer and orders officials to check the menace of overloading or rash driving after every major mishap, not much is visible on the ground if the death figures of road mishaps are any measure, said a senior official.

He hoped that the 18 Tata Sumo vehicles introduced as Tourist Helplines on the Char Dham Yatra Route on Monday would go a long way in decreasing the death stalking tourists and pilgrims moving on the hilly roads and not be converted into plush personal transport by the officials.

The death toll on Uttaranchal roads has increased manifold after the creation of the hill State. This according to observers is due to the increased tourist traffic, lack of respect for hill driving ethics and a loose policing system with the officials adopting a "chalta hai" attitude against violators of transport laws.

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