At least two buildings in Sikkim had collapsed and others developed cracks, Gyatso said Sunday.
His presence in Sikkim was in itself a measured gesture of Indian defiance towards China.
Bhutia now co-owns the United Sikkim club, which has risen to the I-League's top division just five years after its formation.
The nonprofit organization reported that the quake cut off phone communication and electricity in parts of Sikkim and West Bengal provinces.
Once Chhoygal Raja of Sikkim ruled his country in a similar way but that led the country to become an Indian state.
Already, authorities have reported power outages and downed phone lines in Sikkim.
Already, 300 civilians had been rescued in one such effort near Sikkim's border with China, said Indo-Tibetan Border Police spokesman Deepak Kumar Pandey.
On Monday morning, Sikkim's chief secretary Karma Gyatso said that seven people had died in that province, 65 suffered trauma and 33 had minor injuries.
Again and again, both sides point to Sikkim, where Hindu-Nepalese migrants eventually outnumbered the Buddhist natives and then voted the independent state out of existence.
Trade between China and India has flourished in recent years, but several border disputes - including over Kashmir and Sikkim - have never been resolved.
While other kingdoms have vanished across the Himalayas--Tibet fell to China, Ladakh and Sikkim were engulfed by India--King Jigme has preserved Bhutan's independence and cultural heritage.
At least four fighter jets were carrying rescue officers to a neighboring region, where they travel by road to Gangtok, Sikkim's capital, according to the alert.
China has long-term plans for more extensions of the line, to Nyalam on the border with Nepal and to Dromo near Bhutan and the Indian state of Sikkim.
And the Indian government's refusal to allow Ogyen Trinley to enter Sikkim has become a political issue: the state is littered with posters demanding he be allowed in.
Most Karmapa followers are devotees of the 14-year-old boy from Tibet and dismiss claims to the sect's leadership by a 16-year-old rival, Thinley Thai Dorje, who resides in Sikkim.
The Chinese reciprocated by opening border trade on the Nathu La pass after 40 years - a move many in India saw as recognition of Indian control over Sikkim.
China long refused to recognise Sikkim's incorporation into India, though since 2004 Chinese maps have shown it as an Indian state, and in 2006 a modest border trade began.
At least 18 people have died, including a five year old girl, in a 6.8 magnitude earthquake that hit the east India state of Sikkim and neighboring Nepal on Sunday.
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It may hope that the newly-departed Karmapa will cause mischief in India: he may go to a monastery in Sikkim, bringing attention to a territory annexed by India in 1975 to China's enduring disgust.
But the two countries' focus on trade has also allowed symbolic gestures of greater mutual trust, such as the reopening in 2006 of an overland trading route through Sikkim that had been closed since the 1962 Sino-Indian war.
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Shakti's modus operandi, difficult to sum up in a nutshell, is this: Here and in similar operations in Sikkim and Kumaon, Shakti leases floors in larger, well-situated traditional houses around the region, often with the family remaining in residence on other floors.
New Delhi (CNN) -- At least 18 people -- 13 in India and five in Nepal -- died when a magnitude-6.9 earthquake struck the northern Indian state of Sikkim near the border between the two nations Sunday night, local government officials told sister network CNN-IBN.
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