The Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB), which met here on Tuesday, is quite satisfied at the slew of measures initiated by it over a period of time to improve amenities available to devotees visiting the 12,729-foot-high revered place of worship in Kashmir Himalayas.
The meeting held under the chairmanship of Jammu and Kashmir governor Narendra Nath Vohra, who is also the chairman of the SASB, reviewed the ongoing yatra and expressed satisfaction over the “strenuous efforts made under his (governor’s) sustained direction for ensuring satisfactory management of the pilgrimage despite serious constraints arising from the heavy snowfalls in the preceding winter and bad weather for several weeks before the commencement of the current event which commenced on June 25.”
The meeting was held on a day when the BJP demanded the Centre to intervene in the growing number of Amarnath pilgrims’ deaths, which has risen to 97.
A seven-member delegation of MPs of the main Opposition party met Union home minister P. Chidambaram in New Delhi and submitted a memorandum to him on the increasing number of fatalities among the pilgrims. It also raised the issues of reduction of duration of yatra and basic facilities to the pilgrims. The home minister reportedly assured the delegation that he would talk to J&K governor.
Earlier on Monday, the Supreme Court, while expressing “shock” over growing number of Amarnath pilgrims’ death, had asked the Jammu and Kashmir government to immediately deploy medical teams for “yatris”.
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BJP takes up pilgrims’ deaths with pc
AGE CORRESPONDENT
New Delhi, July 24
A BJP delegation, led by both the Leaders of the Opposition in Parliament — Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley — on Tuesday met home minister P. Chidambaram urging the Centre to take urgent steps to prevent deaths of Amarnath pilgrims and ensure proper facilities for them. With nearly 100 pilgrims dying this year in the course of the yatra, the main Opposition demanded extension of the pilgrimage period and proper medical facilities and accommodation for the pilgrims.
“We have urged the home minister to take urgent steps and do the needful to extend the tenure of the yatra and provide facilities to stop such death which has created anguish across the country,” said Ms Swaraj after the meeting.
The party claimed, one of the major factors behind such high mortality this year was the “drastic squeezing” of the yatra duration from the usual 60 days to just 39 days and blamed the Amarnath Shrine Board for the “chaos”.