Golden Temple visitors’ woes: Traffic mess, encroachments increase at holy city’s most thronged place

At crores of rupees, heritage street was constructed during SAD-BJP regime to make pilgrimage hassle-free and beautify surroundings of Golden Temple, but it’s quite congested

AMRITSAR Unregulated movement of vehicles, especially auto-rickshaws and e-rickshaws and encroachment by shopkeepers and venders on Heritage Street and other streets that leads to the Golden Temple are creating great inconvenience to the devotees and tourists visiting the Central Sikh shrine and give them nightmare.

Rickshaws, e-rickshaws, auto rickshaws vendors creating hurdles on the way of devotees on heritage street that leads to Golden Temple, Amritsar. (Photo by Sameer Sehgal /Hindustan Times)

At crores of rupees, the heritage street was constructed during SAD-BJP regime to make the pilgrimage hassle free and beautify the surroundings of the Golden Temple, but it is currently quite congested. There is no control of the administration and Police over its affairs. The devotees and tourists struggle to pass through it.

In a fresh tweet, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) which manages affairs of the Golden Temple, said, “The Punjab Government has failed to tackle this problem of removing encroachments on Heritage Street besides e-rickshaws which completely block routes of Sangat approaching Sri Harmandar Sahib. We sent resolutions to Govt but it did nothing”.

The resolution was passed by the General House of the gurdwara body during its Budget Session in March this year. This resolution also put light on the dilapidated condition of other streets leading to the shrine. As the footfall is rising day by day at the shrine, all other streets which passes through very congested areas, are jammed with the unruly and uncontrolled auto-rickshaws, e-rickshaws, rickshaws and four wheelers carrying the visitors.

Recently, a deputation of NGOs met Punjab local bodies minister Inderbir Singh Nijjar to make him aware of the Heritage Street problems created due to unauthorised and illegal encroachments by vendors, E-rikshas, etc. In a memorandum, the minister who hails from Amritsar was told that it seems that a “well organised mafia” is operating in the Heritage Street causing unnecessary problems for the tourists visiting Sri Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple).

“The issue has been brought both verbally and in written to the Police Commissioner Amritsar, Deputy Commissioner Amritsar, Municipal commissioner Amritsar, but nothing concrete has been done. Due to increasing number of tourists a very crucial problem of parking has been created, but administration has not planned solution of this serious problem yet”, said representatives of these NGOs including Amritsar Vikas Manch.

When contacted, Deputy Commissioner Harpreet Singh Sudan said, “Despite several efforts of the civil and police administration, the people involved in causing such kind inconvenience are not stopping such practices. Sometime ago, we launched a drive to remove the encroachment, but to no avail. Recently, we constituted a join committee of the Police and SGPC to control the encroachments. The problem is that we launch drive to remove the encroachments, all the stakeholders lift their goods before we reach”.

“As far as the uncontrolled movement of the e-rickshaws and auto-rickshaws, we have asked the Police Commissionerate to check it. It is their task to control this side”, he added. Police officers concerned did not respond to the phone calls.