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Wednesday,
June 20, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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Pilgrims rue poor facilities at
Katra Residents face water
shortage
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Army’s efforts to win hearts of
Ladakhis ‘Reserve’
seats for Sikh students
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Pilgrims rue poor facilities at
Katra Katra, June 19 Against the room capacity of 10,000 to 12,000 in hotels and private guest houses between 40,000 and 50,000 yatris land in this small town daily. Between 10,000 and 15,000 pilgrims reach Jammu by trains everyday and two holiday specials have been pressed into service to cope up with the rush of the yatris.
Others travel in chartered buses, not only from Punjab, Haryana, Himachal but from Delhi and from other states in the country. According to police officials more than 500 small vehicles, packed with pilgrims, enter the town daily. More than 100 locals have converted their small houses into guest rooms where pilgrims are charged money for the night stay. Some of the cab and three-wheeler owners too have jumped into the business and carry the pilgrims to their shanty rooms. Shamsher Singh, with a family of eight members from Haryana, said he had spent two nights in the open in the town when he failed to find a vacant room in any hotel or in the guest houses of the Shrine Board and the Tourism Development Corporation. Mr M.K. Diwedi, Additional Chief Executive Officer, Shrine Board, said the occupancy rate in the hotels and guest houses was 100 per cent these days. A visit to the town revealed that during the past five years more than 20 new hotels had come up and another 25 hotels had expanded their room capacity. A hotel owner said there was no further scope for building new hotels because Katra and the route to the shrine witnessed heavy rush only thrice a year. One during Navratras in March and September and again in June and July. For the rest of the year the occupancy rate in the hotels and guest houses was between 20 and 30 per cent which entailed losses to the hotel owners. Shamsher Singh a resident of a village 10 km from Katra said the Shrine Board should set up tented colonies in Katra and at two places near the bhavan where during the peak season the pilgrims could get a secure place for rest. The chaos at the bhavan too is a matter of worry for the pilgrims. The maximum capacity for pilgrims at the bhavan is 18,000 but at present there are between 22,000 and 25,000 yatris waiting for their turn to enter into the cave. Because of the heavy rush one pilgrim gets not more than three seconds to pray inside the cave, according to the shrine board officials. Darshan Kumar from Delhi was upset that after spending a lot of money he could have ‘darshan’ for just three seconds. Police officials said: “We have to regulate pilgrim traffic at Katra. We cannot allow all 40,000 yatris to proceed to the bhavan because it may lead to a stampede near the shrine”. As such between 10,000 and 12,000 yatris are allowed to leave Katra in batches from morning till evening everyday. |
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Residents face water
shortage Udhampur Earlier, the Public Health Department used to supply water twice a day. Thereafter, water began to be supplied twice a day for only three days in a week and once a day for the rest of the week. This schedule continued for about two years. Now water is being provided only once a day. No regular supply is being made by the department to the residents of Udhampur. Water is supplied four or five days a week. On the days on which there is no water supply, harassed men, women and children can be seen going from place to place in search of water from other sources. A few years ago it was reported that the Central Government had selected certain districts in the state, including Udhampur, under the Rajiv pilot project. Under the scheme, water was to be provided to the residents of the selected districts. However, no steps have been taken to implement the scheme. In the rural areas, too, a similar situation exists. The water problem can be solved there by sinking more tubewells. * * * The telephone service in Udhampur district often remains disrupted. It is difficult to telephone various places, including Bhaderwah, Doda, Kishtwar, Ramban and Banihal. The telephone lines from Udhampur to Ramnagar, Majalta, Reasi, Pouni, etc, also often remain disrupted. Meanwhile, residents of Udhampur and nearby villages have complained that they had applied for telephone connections about three years ago but were yet to get these. * * * The road from Udhampur to Bashaal is in poor shape. The road passes through Karan Nagar, Chariswail and the railway station (under construction). Despite heavy traffic on it, no attention is being given to its maintenance. Residents of the area approached the authorities many times in this connection. After two months the road from Udhampur to Chariswail was repaired. However, the stretch from Chariswail to Bashaal is still kutcha. Only one-way traffic is permitted on the busy road and residents have demanded that it should be widened. |
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Future Buddha’s statue open to
public Kargil, June 19 Believed to have been carved out of rock by local architects in the seventh century AD, the area is termed as Bamiyan of India, after the demolition of Buddha statues in Afghanistan. The Gandhar art, a blend of local and Tibetan art, is also found in similar statues at three other locations, including the biggest one at Mulbekh in the region. The Mitriya Chamba is located on the trek route to Mulbekh via Barsoo nallah on the left side of Karchay Khar village, 7 km from Sankoo. “We have reason to believe it has been made in the Gandhar art”, said Mr Parvez Dewan, Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Department of Tourism, Jammu and Kashmir Government. The art was common in the Kashmir-Kandahar-Kargil region, according to Mr Dewan. He added different parts of the statue were made “Kashmiri art”. The statues were being visited by a large number of people in the past. In order to boost tourism in the region, the government has been focusing on pilgrim tourism in the state while places of interest are discovered for the people in general. This year’s Kargil festival was inaugurated by the Minister of State for Tourism, Miss Sakina Ittoo, the second such attempt to uncover the “hidden treasures” of the region for the attraction of the tourists from outside the area and the state. “We hope that more and more tourists come to the area to uncover the hidden treasures of our historical background”, said one of the officials. To attract more and more tourists to Kargil, the Kargil tourist festival was held for the first time in 1996. More attention has been given to the festival since last year, a year after the Kargil war. The inauguration of the festival since last year was held at Goshan Grounds in Dras at the foothills of Tiger and Tololing hills. The area assumes significance as it remained in the news for over three months during the Kargil war of 1999. Unlike Kashmir valley where militancy has been taking the toll of human lives and thereby peace and progress, the Kargil region has proved to be safe. But for the Kargil intrusion in May 1999, which led to a two-month-long conflict between Indian and Pakistani troops, the region has been peaceful. With the three-month-long ordeal for the local population of Dras, Kargil, Batalik, Kaksar etc, the region is back on rails and has opened its bosom for a promising tourist season. There is a direct impact of the Kashmir militancy on the tourist flow to the frontier cold desert region of Ladakh, beginning with Kargil district. The Kargil conflict also led to a serious blow to the tourist traffic to the valley two years back. Only foreign tourists, though comparatively lesser in number, have been visiting the region even through the early 1990s of militancy. Kargil was thrown open to foreign tourists for the first time in 1974. Since then tourism has become a well-established part of the local economy and an important sector of the development process of the district, according to the officials. “It has opened new avenues of investment and profit for the local population. The district receives an average annual tourist traffic of 12,000 foreign and 5,000 home tourists in normal circumstances”, according to an official spokesman. Efforts are on to develop the tourism facilities in the district and particularly the Suru valley which has a scenic beauty and trekking potential. The scenic spots include Sankoo, where the colourful function to attract tourists was held as part of the ongoing Kargil Mela on June 16, the statues of Buddha, including those at Karchay Khar and Mulbekh, the base for the trek to Nun Kun peak etc. |
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Army’s efforts to win hearts of
Ladakhis Dras, June 19 “The whole focus of ‘Operation Sadbhavana’ in the Ladakh region is to win the hearts and minds of the people, thereby forestalling militancy, which has obvious ramifications in conflict prevention,” Brigadier R.E. Williams said here. He said the operation had helped in improving the environment and interaction at various levels. Brigadier Williams was talking to a group of mediapersons visiting the area. He said the area was absolutely peaceful and the people of the area, who faced hardships during the Kargil war in 1999, were now relaxed. Brigadier Williams said that while border security was being looked after by the troops up-front, human security was also being dealt with. The thrust of “Operation Sadbhavana” was on primary education, healthcare, community development and empowerment of women. Efforts were being made with the total support of the civil administration, he stated. Some of the activities being undertaken include rural electrification, village irrigation through water management and construction of water channels, setting up of poultry farming cooperatives, cultural integration by mass community participation, repair of school buildings etc. Schools impart computer education while separate computer centres have also been set up at various locations. Special classes have also been introduced for mentally challenged children, while similar classes for physically challenged persons would be started in the near future. Nine volunteer teachers from Bangalore have come to offer their services while three more such teachers will be arriving shortly, informed Brigadier Williams. The other teachers in the school include a local religious leader who ensures that regional cultural values are preserved. Music classes, educational tours and sports activities have also been started. In the area of health care, medical officers visit villages and go from house to house checking patients. Medical aid centres have been established, where enhanced primary and secondary medical care is given. Patients requiring special medical attention are referred to the field surgical centres or to General Hospital, Leh. For major surgeries, the patients are flown to Army Hospital at Chandimandir or to the PGI, Chandigarh, at the Army’s expense, Brigadier Williams stated. The locals have a word of thanks for the Army which comes to their rescue by way of treatment of patients under difficult circumstances in the far-flung areas. For the six months’ period of winter, when the Zojila Pass, the gateway to the frontier region of Ladakh, gets blocked due to heavy snowfall, the troops come to the help of the local population by providing healthcare, education and other basic facilities. |
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‘Reserve’
seats for Sikh students Jammu, June 19 In a statement issued here today after a meeting of
the party leaders, Mr Jagdev Singh said following the massacre of
Sikhs in Chattisinghpora, Mehjoor Nagar (Srinagar), Banihal, Qazigund,
and Surankot (Poonch), the community students deserved reservation of
seats in the medical college. He said the community members in the
state were feeling depressed and discriminated.
He also requested Mr Talwandi to postpone the dates
for the entrance test conducted by the Trust as the dates for the
common entrance test for medical colleges in the state had been fixed
for July 21 and 22 which clashed with the entrance test in Amritsar.
The statement said it would therefore, not be possible
for the students belonging to the community to simultaneously appear
in the tests at Amritsar and Jammu and Kashmir. |
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