Dehradun: Uttar Pradesh with 1,564 people unaccounted for tops the list of the missing in Uttarakhand. It is followed by Rajasthan (820), Madhya Pradesh (504), Maharashtra (296) and Delhi (213).
Sources in the Uttarakhand government said the official count of the missing could eventually total around 4,500. This would include 795 people from Uttarakhand.
Until Monday, UP had sent three lists, identifying 1,564 people who have not returned home from Uttarakhand after the June 16-17 flash floods.
"We have sent a list of 1,564 missing people of our state. We will send another list on Tuesday morning," A K Singh, who is OSD in the UP home department, told The Indian Express over phone. He said this was not the final list.
The Uttarakhand government, which is trying to total the number of missing people by turning to different sources such as FIRs, social networking sites, a Facebook account called Operation Connect and helpline numbers, has also asked state governments to send lists of the missing.
So far, only Jharkhand and Puducherry have not sent their lists to the missing people’s cell of Uttarakhand.
"We have been told there were 36 people from Jharkhand in Uttarakhand at the time of the disaster," a source said, adding that only one person from Puducherry is said to be missing.
Gujarat, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have sent lists putting their respective missing numbers at 120, 113, 96, 77, 66, 31, 27, 26, 14 and 14.
National Disaster Management Authority member V K Duggal said the government would be in a position to make public an approximate figure of the missing within the next two days. "We are waiting for the list from UP," he told reporters.
A UP official said it was for the government of Uttarakhand, the state of occurrence, to rule on the fate of the missing. He said that the absence of bodies would make it difficult for state governments to issue death certificates.