70 missing from UP, Yogi sets up helplines

Lakhimpur Kheri (Uttar Pradesh) Feb 9 : Nearly 70 persons from Uttar Pradesh are reported missing after the Uttarakhand catastrophe.
The maximum number of missing persons belong to Lakhimpur district. Majority of the labourers had gone to work on the Tapovan project in the farming off-season.
The local people in Ichchhanagar said that 26 persons from their village had left for Tapovan and 18 had gone missing.
Those in Bharampur said 11 have neither returned home and nor have they contacted their families. In Bholanpur, five persons are feared missing.
District Magistrate Shailendra Singh did not confirm the exact number of missing persons but said that a list of all workers from Lakhimpur Kheri is being compiled.
“We have deployed lekhpals to collate the information from villages and share it with the tehsildar and subdivisional magistrate. We are then verifying the data by getting in touch with family members. As of now, we suspect 35 people from just the Nighasan tehsil have gone missing,” he said.