After the latest tragedy, Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu set up a committee of experts under S S Randhawa, Principal Scientist at HP State Council for Science, Technology and Environment, to study factors resulting in landslides, uprooting of hundreds of trees, building collapses and cases of land subsidence. The committee has been tasked with making recommendations to regulate future construction activity, ensure structural safety and save the hill station from sliding downhill, mostly on account of its own sins of commission and omission. The government has also imposed a temporary ban on construction activity, hill cutting and felling of trees, albeit for two weeks. The measure, according to the state’s chief secretary Prabodh Saxena, “will ensure safety for human lives, habitations, infrastructure and to preserve the fragile ecological environment of the hill state.” The Himachal Pradesh government has also asked the Centre to declare the latest spell of disaster as a natural calamity on the lines of the Bhuj earthquake and the Kedarnath tragedy.