State authorities are least concerned about the ordeal through which the pilgrims to Machail Mata in Paddar Kishtwar are subjected by the elfish and wily chopper companies that were supposed to lift them after the pilgrims had booked their seats on line. No minister has visited the site to see how for so many days hundreds of pilgrims, old and infirm are left stranded at the helipad.
When the two chopper companies namely Pawan Hans and U-Tier were contacted they made the excuse of bad weather. But the reality, as has emerged now, is that these two chopper companies have not obtained formal permission from the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) New Delhi to fly to Machail as the permission is obligatory. The question is that the companies were given permission to fly from August 1 and they opened booking on line which had a good response and hundreds of pilgrims booked their seats on line and paid the money. They should have obtained the permission much in advance of the day on which the flight was to operate but they did not and naturally the ultimate victim of this negligence are the passengers. It is a question of playing a fraud with the passengers. The Government must step in immediately and first make the arrangement of evacuating the stranded pilgrims and then recover the money they have already paid to chopper companies and then blacklist and punish the companies for defrauding the people in broad day light. They are so brazen as to tell lies to hundreds of stranded passengers that owing to bad weather they could not fly. The police must lodge an FIR against them of playing fraud with the people.
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