A high-level team of government functionaries, led by Jammu and Kashmir’s health minister Sham Lal Sharma, on Monday visited the base camps and various halting places en-route to Amarnath shrine to review the medical facilities available to the pilgrims.
This comes a day after the Supreme Court, while taking suo moto notice of a large number of deaths of the pilgrims during annual pilgrimage so far this year, issued notices to the state government and Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) asking them to explain reasons for the deaths and steps taken to check them. A division bench of the top court, comprising Justices Swatantar Kumar and Balbir Singh Chouhan asked them to respond to the notices by July 20. Justice Swatantar had recently visited holy shrine, during which he is reported to have received feedback from the pilgrims. After his visit, the SC took suo moto notice of the death. Since June 25, when the yatra started, as many as 89 pilgrims have died, most of them after suffering cardiac arrest.
The team which, according to SASB, visited the cave shrine and the base camps of Baltal and Nunwan (Pahalgam) besides Sheshnag and Panjtarni halting places on the directions of governor N.N. Vohra, who is also chairman of the board, and chief minister Omar Abdullah found sufficient medical facilities have been made available to the pilgrims. The other prominent members of the team included minister of state for health Javid Ahmad Dar and SASB CEO Navin K. Choudhary.
The team inspected all medical aid centres at these camps, checked the number of doctors and para-medical staff on duty, and the availability of medicines, essential diagnostic and treatment equipments and oxygen cylinders.