STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: To promote religious tourism in J&K, a meeting of Jammu & Kashmir Religious Tourism Culture & Heritage was held at Jammu, under the chairmanship of Sham Lal Sharma (former Cabinet Minister) and Mahant Rajesh Bittu.
Speaking during the meeting, Sham Lal expressed gratitude towards Rajesh Bittu for taking the initiative to promote religious tourism in Jammu provision.
He further said that proper way, in which J&K tourism should have been promoted, was not properly executed by successive Kashmir-centric Government. On an average, more than 1 crore tourists, from across the world, throng the shrine of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine located in Katra, but appropriate measures were not taken to promote the religious tourism in Jammu region. “Once a tourist enters J&K from Lakhanpur, there are a lot many religious shrines of great historic value, which can be visited enroute Katra, but due to lack of promotion and development of shrines, tourism is suffering badly,” he added. Tourism acts as backbone of J&K’s economy, as such to help local businesses and to spread Dogra culture and heritage across entire country and world, we need to promote religious tourism by promoting all the religious places of Jammu province and J&K, he added.
Sharma further said that he would take up the issues with the Government and with Members of Parliament of J&K so that the religious tourism can be promoted.
Mahant Rajesh Bittu said that we are hopeful that Sham Lal Sharma would take up the matter with Government and some positive action would be taken in this regard to promote religious tourism. Harish Sharma thanked Sham Lal Sharma for listening to their views besides assuring for taking up the issue with the Government and Members of Parliament.
Those who attended the meeting included Kapil Verma, Parshotam Singh (Sarpanch), Kuldeep Singh, Devinder Singh Jasrotia, Manohar Lal Shastri, Yougal Kishore (Akhnoor), Vijay (Sukrala), Nitin Choudhary, Anil Andotra and Kusum Indu (Samba).