Mismanagement derails Amarnath yatra arrangements of administration

Nitesh Sangral
JAMMU, July 5: The recent chaos which the city witnessed due to the heavy influx of the unregistered Amarnath yatris has exposed the poor measures taken by the administration to deal with the yatra. For whole three days, there was total disarray in the city and along the national highway, which saw long traffic jams due to the stopping of the vehicles by the police to stop the unregistered pilgrims towards Kashmir. Sources said that it seems there is no coordination between various agencies who have been entrusted to run the yatra smoothly in the state. The state government and SASB have earlier claimed to provide the pilgrims each and every possible requirement but the ground zero situation seems to be different from what it is claimed. Even the city traders are not providing their guests the friendliness behavior as they are engaged in taking money from out of the state pilgrims. It is pertinent to mention here that before the commencement of the yatra the government and concerned authorities had claimed to be fulfilling all the facilities to the yatris but on ground truth is something different. Interestingly, Minster of Industries and Commerce Surjit Singh Slathia had taken a detailed meeting yesterday to take stock of the problems being faced by the pilgrims, but so far there has been no respite for the thousands of people who are suffering due to mismanagement. Sangeeta Devi a pilgrim from Delhi said that they are suffering a lot of problems from the last two days as a huge number of people stand outside the counter of registration daily but they are not being sent to right way. "The government should have made proper arrangements for the pilgrims but the local administration didn't bother about it. The protests are being staged so openly due to which we are facing problems. We don't feel safe amidst all this," said Sangeeta. Another pilgrim from UP said “this is when the Governor NN Vohra, himself has seen the arrangements, if this would not be we might be in a worst situation than this one.” She added that the state government should direct the traders and shopkeepers not to take extra charges from the out of state people. She said that shopkeepers are taking the advantage of situation by selling their low price products in high costs. The pilgrims said that the many ministers have come to review the situation of the ground many times but still the arrangements are not up to the mark.