Day after stampede, Vaishno Devi Shrine Board decides yatra bookings to go online
🔴 A Shrine Board official said that while on an average, only 2,000 daily yatra slips are issued online, around 28,000 are issued to pilgrims on their arrival at Katra.
Pilgrims queuing up on their way to the Vaishno Devi shrine, in Reasi on Sunday. (ANI) A day after 12 pilgrims died in a stampede, the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board on Sunday decided that bookings for the yatra to the shrine can only be done online.
At present, pilgrims undertaking the 13-km trek can either get their yatra slips issued online or on their arrival at Katra town. A Shrine Board official said that while on an average, only 2,000 daily yatra slips are issued online, around 28,000 are issued to pilgrims on their arrival at Katra.
The decision to move the bookings online was taken at the Board’s meeting chaired by J&K Lt Governor Manoj Sinha, who also announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to the next of kin of each of those who died on Saturday. This is in addition to the Rs 10 lakh ex-gratia announced on Saturday.
An official statement on Sunday said that the Board had directed its Chief Executive Officer Ramesh Kumar to take “urgent action on diverse fronts, including effective crowd management, augmentation of infrastructure, making booking of yatra 100 per cent through online mode, working out plans for decongestion of the entire track, particularly the Bhawan area, (and) separation of entry and exit routes at (the) Bhawan”.
Faced with criticism following the stampede, sources said the shrine Board is unlikely to allow more than 25,000 daily pilgrims to the shrine.
Meanwhile, Katra town, the base camp for the yatra in the Trikuta Hills, was largely deserted on Sunday. The teeming crowds of the past three days — outside the Shrine Board’s counters at the bus stand and near Trikuta Bhawan, and at the Niharika building complex, which houses rooms and dormitories for pilgrims — had thinned out.
Only a day earlier, there had been long queues of pilgrims seeking yatra slips — a mandatory requirement for all those embarking on the trek — at the Board’s counters.
Sources said that from 5 am till 1 pm, only 11,000 pilgrims had sought yatra slips, while 24,990 pilgrims had proceeded to the shrine on Saturday.
The roads too were deserted. Hoteliers complained of cancellation of advance bookings, saying that following the stampede, a number of pilgrims either returned without the darshan, or cancelled their trip to Katra.
On Sunday, the three-member committee set up by the UT government visited the stampede spot along with J&K Chief Secretary Arun Kumar Mehta. Led by Principal Secretary Home Shaleen Kabra, the committee has Additional DGP (Jammu) Mukesh Singh and Jammu Divisional Commissioner Dr Raghav Langer as members.
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