27-05-2025
Exit Srinagar, enter Pahalgam: To build confidence, Omar, his cabinet to meet at terror-hit tourist spot
To instil confidence in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack and encourage tourists to return to Kashmir, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and his cabinet will move out of the capital, Srinagar, to tourist resorts of Pahalgam and Gulmarg for two days.
On Tuesday, the J&K cabinet and top civil and police officers will meet not in Srinagar's civil secretariat, but at a resort in Pahalgam. This comes a little over a month after 25 tourists and a local were killed in a terror strike in the meadows of Pahalgam.
'Obviously, if we don't go to these places, who will?' CM's advisor Nasir Aslam Wani told The Indian Express. 'There are two objectives of this meeting – first, that we go to these far-off places and get first-hand information from the ground, and second, it becomes more important in the current situation that we go there (to instil confidence).'
Abdullah will personally chair the meeting, which Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo will also attend. The CM and his cabinet are also likely to meet stakeholders from the tourism sector in Pahalgam.
A similar meeting is scheduled at a tourist resort in Gulmarg in north Kashmir on Wednesday. Inspector General of Police (IGP), Kashmir, V K Birdi is expected to be in attendance.
The meetings come at a time when tourism in the Valley has taken a serious hit, with stakeholders in the sector saying 90 per cent of bookings have been cancelled.
'There is a hope that these (meetings) will infuse confidence among tourism players as well as tourists that it's safe to return to the Valley,' said an official.
In fact, during the NITI Aayog meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi on Saturday, Abdullah suggested that meetings of the parliamentary consultative committee, the parliamentary standing committee, and public sector undertakings be held in J&K to allay security fears.
This is not the first time Omar and his cabinet have moved out of the state capital. In his first stint as chief minister, he held a cabinet meeting on the Line of Control in Tangdhar in May 2012 to 'bring governance to the doorsteps (of people)'.
Rauf Tramboo, president of the Travel Agents Association of Kashmir, said that the meetings are a welcome decision, but 'to build confidence, we need to do some tangible things.'
'The first thing for the government to do to build confidence among tourists is to open destinations that have been kept out of bounds. And the second thing is to open trekking trails, especially safe ones like the Great Lakes trek or the Tarsar Marsar,' Tramboo said.
