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Amarnath Yatra halted again after landslide blocks highway near Jammu
fresh landslips, mudslides and shooting stones witnessed at Panthiyal, Cafeteria Morh and Mehar in Ramban district of Jammu led to the Amarnath Yatra being halted
Blurb: Jammu-Srinagar national highway blocked in Ramban
The annual Amarnath Yatra on Saturday faced another disruption in Jammu following bad weather conditions, which triggered multiple landslides on the 270-km-long Jammu-Srinagar national highway in Ramban district.
Nearly 4,600 devotees who took the Pahalgam route had to return because of landslides amid worsening weather conditions. Speaking about the same, “Two separate convoys of Amarnath pilgrims left Yatri Niwas base camp in Jammu city for the holy cave shrine on Saturday morning. Though the batch of 2,504 pilgrims, who preferred Baltal route, were allowed to reach Yatri Niwas base camp in Ramban district, another batch of 4,549 pilgrims, who had preferred Pahalgam route, had to return to Jammu base camp from Udhampur’s Tikri area following landslides on the highway in Ramban district.”
“Overnight rains that continued on Saturday as well triggered fresh landslides, mudslides and shooting stones at Panthiyal, Cafeteria Morh and Mehar in Ramban district blocking the highway,” they added.
Officials further rsaid a National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) team have begun work to clear the debri, adding, “Though there are no stranded vehicles on the highway, fresh slides have blocked it at a few places and it will take some time to clear the debris.”
No fresh batch of Amarnath Yatris was allowed farther than Jammu to the shrine in southern Kashmir due to inclement weather on Friday.
However, nearly 5,000 devotees from Jammu, who stayed overnight at Yatri Niwas in Ramban were allowed to proceed on Friday morning to Pahalgam and Baltal base camps in Kashmir following the one-way restoration of the affected stretch.
The Amarnath Yatra had previously been suspended from Jammu due to bad weather on July 10 before resuming on July 11.
The annual 43-day pilgrimage commenced on June 30 from the twin base camps — the traditional 48-km Nunwan-Pahalgam in southern Kashmir’s Anantnag and the 14-km shorter Baltal in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal.
Over 2.30 lakh pilgrims had offered their prayers at the cave shrine, housing the naturally-formed ice-shivling, the officials said.
A total of 1,24,714 pilgrims have left from the Jammu’s Bhagwati Nagar base camp for the Valley since June 29. The day the first batch of pilgrims was flagged off by lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha. The pilgrimage is scheduled to end on August 11 on the occasion of Raksha Bandhan.
A total of 35 people, mostly pilgrims, have died during the ongoing pilgrimage till now, excluding the 15 pilgrims who died in the flash floods at the cave shrine on July 1.
