Bride who walked 18 km in her lehenga to a roadless Uttarakhand village may soon get her road

A road to Undava, a remote village in Uttarakhand’s Chakrata area, has moved a step closer days after a bride had to walk about 18 km in her wedding lehenga to reach her new home there. The detailed project report (DPR) for the road was approved by the State Technical Agency (STA) at Roorkee on Saturday, October 24, Live Hindustan reported.

The bride, Sharmila, from Bulhad village in Chakrata tehsil, married a man from Undava on Tuesday. With no road to the village, she and the wedding party walked the whole way on foot, Dainik Jagran reported.

A video of the walk went viral. In it, the person filming asks if she has a message for the chief minister. “I just want to say that there should be proper accessibility of road connectivity,” she replies. Asked how long the walk took in her lehenga, she says: “2 to 2.5 hours, even though we walked in descent.”

“These days, there are roads at every place, but it’s not there in Undava,” a woman says in the video.

After the plea was reported, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami ordered the Rural Works Department to build a road to the village, Dainik Jagran reported.

On Saturday, Rakesh Uttarakhandi, state convener of the Kshetra Panchayat Sangathan Uttarakhand, who had taken the villagers’ demand to the chief minister and Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) officials, met PMGSY chief engineer Mayank Mittal. He was told the DPR had been sent to the Centre and cleared by STA Roorkee, according to Live Hindustan.

Officials expect the remaining steps to follow a meeting in the first week of November. If things go to schedule, tenders for building the road could be issued around November 20, the report said.