UK lifts advisory for travel against Jammu, Srinagar.
TUESDAY, 06 NOVEMBER 2012 23:32 PIONEER NEWS SERVICE/PTI | NEW DELHI/SRINAGAR
In a major boost to the image of Jammu and Kashmir, the UK on Tuesday lifted its nearly two-decade-old advisory to its nationals to avoid traveling to Srinagar, Jammu and Ladakh and said this comes due to “improvements in the security situation” there.
Germany and Japan are two other countries which have already lifted ban on its citizens to visit the state.
UK High Commissioner to New Delhi Sir James Bevan in a letter to Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Tuesday said: “The improvement in the security situation has led us (the UK) to lift the advisory against UK citizens travelling to both the cities of Jammu and Srinagar and travel between these two cities on the Jammu-Srinagar highway.”
Sir James said he is “confident that this measure will encourage more UK tourists and businesses to visit which should in turn benefit the local economy”. However, the advisory against travelling to the rest of the State was still in place, officials said here. “We advise against all travel to rural areas of Jammu and Kashmir other than Ladakh; all travel in the immediate vicinity of the border with Pakistan, other than at Wagah,” the advisory said.
Countries like the US, Australia and New Zealand, however, still advise its citizens to refrain from visiting J&K despite repeated requests by the State Government to lift these restrictions.
The travel advisories were issued after militancy gripped the state in 1989 and the abduction of six tourists by Al Faran, a mysterious terrorist outfit, near Pahalgam in July 1995.
“Yes, the travel advisory has been lifted by the UK. I do not have the exact details of the communication right now but it is a fact that the travel advisory is no longer there”, Atal Duloo, Commissioner cum Secretary to the Government (Tourism department) told The Pioneer.
A Norwegian Hans Ostro was beheaded and an American named John Chides managed to escape from the clutches of terrorists. Four tourists including an American Donald Fred Hutchings, British Paul Wells and Keith Mangan and German Dirk Hasert too had gone missing.
The Jammu and Kashmir tourism department and the state government were persistent in their efforts to convince the UK and other Commonwealth countries for the last five years to lift the ban and the High Commission sent several teams to Kashmir last year to study the situation. In fact, officials in Kashmir were hopeful earlier this year that the UK will lift the ban by the end of this year.
The development would give further boost to the tourism industry in Kashmir, which has gone a long way to overcome the discouraging past marred by violence. This year, officials say that more than 50,000 foreigners have visited the Valley apart from nearly 1.3 million domestic tourists including 6.3 lakh amaranth pilgrims.
According to one estimate, in 2002, 7,806 foreigners visited the state, which increased to 24,330 in 2003; 41,000 in 2004; 44,345 in 2005; 46, 087 in 2006; 53,087 in 2007; 55,000 in 2008; 51, 255 in 2009 and 48,115 in 2010.
“We have been campaigning in New Delhi for the last five years, persuading the British High Commission to lift the advisory,” Rauf Ahmed Tramboo, president of Travel Agents Association of Kashmir, Valley’s biggest body of travel agents and tour operators said adding that UK’s decision would influence other EU countries to follow suit.
