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This year’s Amarnath Yatra in south Kashmir Himalayas would have to be undertaken in a restricted manner due to Covid-19 pandemic.

Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, GC Murmu, peformed “Pratham Aarti” of the ice stalagmite at the holy cave shrine of Amarnath in south Kashmir on Sunday morning.

He was accompanied by his principal secretary and chief executive officer of Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB) Bipul Pathak, additional CEO AK Soni, Division Commissioner Kashmir Pandurang K Pole and other senior officials.

“The LG along with senior officials reached the cave shrine early Sunday morning and performed Pratham Aarti,” said an official of the SASB.

Prasar Bharati, India’s official broadcaster, showed the aarti live. It will do so till August 3.

“Happy to share that the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board in association with Prasar Bharati will bring the live telecast of Aarti from the Holy Cave of Shri Amarnathji on various Doordarshan channels,” Prasar Bharti CEO Shashi Shekhar had tweeted on Saturday. The aarti will be shown live at 3 am and 7 pm.

The chief secretary of Jammu and Kashmir BVR Subrahmanyam on Saturday had said that this year’s Amarnath Yatra in south Kashmir Himalayas would have to be undertaken in a restricted manner, so that the SOPs for Covid-19 are strictly adhered to.

“Given the constraints, a maximum of 500 yatris will be allowed per day by road from Jammu. Therefore, arrangements will have to be limited to this number,” he had said while chairing a meeting of the sub-committee constituted by the Supreme Court.

The curtailed yatra (pilgrimage) is likely to be held from July 23 to August 3 this year from the shorter Baltal route.

On June 5, the top officials of Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) performed “Pratham Pooja” in the state’s winter capital Jammu on the occasion of Jayestha Purnima signifying commencement of the annual pilgrimage.

The “Pratham Pooja” at SASB’s Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Ashram was conducted by Principal secretary to J&K Lieutenant Governor and CEO of Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, Bipul Pathak, ACEO AK Soni.

Last year, the yatra was cut short following intelligence inputs of terror threats ahead of the Centre scrapping Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir. In 2018, the pilgrimage was held for 60 days.

Thousands of pilgrims either trek the traditional and longer 45-km-long Pahalgam route or the shorter 16-km Baltal route to the holy shrine every year.

One of the holiest pilgrimages in Hinduism, the Amarnath Yatra attracts pilgrims from India as well as across the world. There have been terror attacks on the route of the yatra in the past. The last attack took place in 2017 on a bus from Gujarat in Anantnag district that left seven pilgrims dead.

Meanwhile, Jammu and Kashmir high court has sought to know from the government about arrangements and various safety precautions on Amarnath Yatra in view of Covid-19 pandemic.

On Friday, advocate Sachin Sharma had moved an application before the high court that was heard by Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Vinod Chatterji Koul.

The division bench issued notice to the government.

Additional Advocate General (AAG) Aseem Sawhney accepted notice on behalf of the government. Monika Kohli who is assisting the court as Amicus Curiae also accepted the notice.

The court asked the AAG to place before it the proposal and decision of the government with regard to the yatra.

With inputs from HT

Srinagar: Since the past two and a half weeks, Jammu and Kashmir has been witnessing a steady rise in COVID-19 deaths, with more fatalities being reported in this period than the first three months of the pandemic.

Till June 17, in the first three months of the virus outbreak, only 64 people had died in J&K with or of COVID-19, according to official records. But then, 67 Covid-19 patients have died in the two weeks since June 18, taking the death toll in J&K to 127.

The majority of the 127 deaths have taken place in Kashmir (113). On the other hand, Jammu has recorded 14 such deaths in the past two weeks. On Thursday, as many as 10 deaths were reported in a single day, the highest spike in 24 hours.

“Now more severe cases and more symptomatic cases are coming to hospitals,” said Dr Salim Khan, the nodal officer for COVID-19, GMC Srinagar as eight deaths took place on Saturday.

“Deaths are increasing as more severe cases reporting in the hospitals,” says Dr. Naveed Nazir Shah, head of Chest Disease Hospital Srinagar, which is designated Covid-19 hospital. He said most of the people who die are admitted cases, who turn positive. “In few cases some were detected positive after death,” he added.

Health authorities insist that the majority of the people who died in the first three months of the virus outbreak, had multiple underlying co-morbidities before contracting getting infected. However, among the dead, there were 13 patients between the age group of 18 to 45 years and a 15-day-old baby.

Srinagar district has reported 30 COVID-19 deaths, the highest in any district in J&K. While Baramulla district has reported 22 deaths, Kulgam, 16; Shopian,13; Anantnag, 10; Budgam,9; Jammu, 8; Kupwara,7; Pulwama, 4; Doda, 2; one each in Ganderbal, Udhampur, Bandipora, Poonch, Rajouri, and Kathua.

Experts also attribute the sudden rise in deaths to youths going out of their homes without taking basic precautions.

“They don’t wear masks or maintain social distancing. Unfortunately, in most of the cases these young men have become carriers of the infection to their homes, where our elderly contract the virus, develop symptoms and subsequently die,” said a doctor.

In some cases, it has been seen that even doctors don’t use masks. “If doctors are not wearing masks, if private clinicians are not using them, they should be held accountable for it. This is more criminal when doctors do it,” says a senior faculty member of the government medical college Srinagar.

If the data provided by the government is analysed, things appear to have started changing since June 7, when 620 positive cases were reported including 37 from Jammu and 583 from Kashmir. That day two persons from Kashmir died of Covid-19 taking the toll to 41.

With inputs from Outlook

New Delhi: In the past one week over 6,600 applicants — majority of them retired soldiers and officers from the Gorkha community — have got the document that allows them to buy property and apply for jobs in the Union Territory, The Times Of India (TOI) reported.

“More than 5,900 certificates have already been issued,” said Vijay Kumar Sharma, additional deputy commissioner (revenue), Jammu.

In Kashmir, about 700 certificates have been issued, many of them former Gorkha soldiers and officers, TOI added

“In my tehsil alone, there are nearly 2,500 from the Gorkha community who had served in the Indian Army and their families who got domicile (about 3,500 have applied). There are quite a few from the Valmiki community also,” said Dr Rohit Sharma, tehsildar of Bahu in Jammu.

Valmiki community members were brought to the state in 1957 from Punjab after local sanitation workers went on a strike. It was the protest mostly by four groups — Gorkha servicemen, Valmikis, West Pakistan refugees and women who had married outside J&K — that had been at the centre of the decision to expand domicile criteria in the Union Territory.

The domicile rules had been notified by the J&K administration on May 18, with a rider that issuing officers (tehsildars in this case) who did not provide certificates in 15 days would be penalised ₹50,000/=

Non-locals who had lived in J&K for 15 years, their children, officers with central government and central institutions and anyone who has studied in J&K for seven years and appeared in the Class X or XII exams became eligible.

A domicile of Prem Bahadur, 68 years old Ex-Army officer who served in Gorkha Regiment between 1968 to 1987.

The applications have kept coming in — at least 33,000 so far. “We get an average of 200 applications a day,” an official said.

TOI reported that things have slowed because of internet speed; it’s stll 2G internet service in these parts. “But we are doing all we can. It is a time-bound procedure. We have notified rules to act against any tehsildar who delays offering domicile. We will not allow the wait to be prolonged any further,” said Rohit Kansal, spokesperson of the J&K administration told TOI

With inputs from TOI

PTI

Jammu: Four people were arrested for their alleged involvement in an attempt to murder case here, police said on Sunday.

The four are criminals and had attacked Rohan Thapa alias Kallu, a resident of Gorkha Nagar, near Bahu Plaza in Gandhi Nagar area on June 27, causing life threatening injuries to him, a police spokesperson said.

He said Surjeet Singh alias Shittu of Kharian had an old enmity with the victim and conspired with his friends, Ajay Kumar and Sanjeev Kumar, to kill him.

They took the help of Manga of Valmiki Colony who observed the movement of the victim and passed the information to Singh who along with his friends attacked Thapa, the spokesperson said.

A special team was constituted which rounded up some criminal elements based on the footage of CCTV cameras and other evidence, he said.

A number of raids were also conducted in and outside the Jammu district and after hectic efforts, the team headed by SHO Gandhi Nagar Inspector Gurnam Singh Choudhary was successful in apprehending the accused.

The weapon used in the commission of the crime was recovered, the spokesperson said.

Pak has launched a strong plea—to involve a third party—in order to resolve the issue before an escalation leads to a war

Pakistan has launched an international campaign, through PaK leaders, asking the international community to refrain from terming Kashmir as a bilateral “dispute” between India and Pakistan.

It has launched a strong plea—to involve a third party—in order to resolve the issue before an escalation leads to a war between the two countries.

The campaign has been launched through webinars, in which PaK President Masood Khan stated that the United Kingdom—that ruled undivided India before the Partition in 1947—not to indulge in “diplomatic escapism” and desist from calling Kashmir a “ bilateral issue.”

This is the beginning of a large scale campaign, planned by Pakistan, to drum up support for third-party mediation on J&K.

In a webinar, titled ‘Twin Lockdown in Kashmir and Global Response’ organized on Saturday by Tehreek-e-Hurriyat-UK, a pro-Pakistan lobbyist group in the UK, PaK president asked British Parliamentarians and civil society of Britain “to invoke 10 Downing Street and foreign office as also the Commonwealth office to reflect on the deteriorating situation in Kashmir.”

Tehreek-e-Hurriyat was founded by Syed Ali Shah Geelani in September 2003 after he had parted ways with the original Hurriyat Conference led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. Geelani had recently resigned from his faction of the Hurriyat Conference that included Tehreek-e-Hurriyat as one of the constituents.

In his resignation, Geelni had charged the APHC chapter of PaK with corruption.

Now, Pakistan is seeking to blunt his criticism and in the process is rebuffing its standpoint of resolving the issue through dialogue between Delhi and Islamabad.

Pakistani media reports quoted Labour MP Liam Byrne saying “the United Kingdom had to drop the pretence that this disputed issue must be resolved bilaterally. There should be impartial third-party mediation for the resolution of the issue in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions on Kashmir.”

Byrne went to the extent of bringing a spectre of war between India and Pakistan. He said: “There was a risk of war if the situation escalated amongst the two neighbours.”

MP Nadia Whittome (Labour) demanded the withdrawal of troops and an end to human rights violations in ‘Occupied’ Kashmir. She said that Articles 35-A and 370 should be immediately restored.

Some British Parliamentarians, inclined to a third party resolving the issue, also took part in this webinar. The theme of the seminar was to present a picture of distress in Kashmir after August 5 last year when the Government of India had scraped the special status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcated it into the two union territories.

India maintains that the only dispute is about the territories illegally occupied by Pakistan across the LoC, including PaK and Gilgit-Baltistan. India has asked Pakistan to vacate these territories.

With inputs from The Tribune