SRINAGAR, July : As many as 1.6 lakh pilgrims have paid obeisance at holy ice-lingam of Lord Shiva at Amarnath cave shrine in South Kashmir Himalayas since the beginning of pilgrimage this year on June 28, Amarnath Shrine board official said here.
The Amarnath pilgrimage is proceeding smoothly and pilgrims, including women and sadhus, left Baltal base camp for holy cave shrine early this morning, a yatra official said. Similarly the pilgrims, who had darshan till last night, have also started return journey to Baltal this morning. He said several thousand pilgrims also left Nunwan Pahalgam for Chandanwari, the last motorable halting station on traditional route.
He said pilgrims, who had night halt at different halting stations on the 42-km-long track, have also started their journey towards the cave shrine.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) R K Gupta said the on-spot registration of Yatris is proceeding smoothly in Jammu at Vaishnavi Dham, Sarswati Dham, Jammu Haat and Geeta Bhawan and in Srinagar at Tourist Reception Centre (TRC) Nowgam.
The quota for On-Spot Registration, for each route, is released daily, on the basis of the trend of arrival of Yatris at Baltal and Chandanwari, and also keeping in view the number of pilgrims registered earlier by 426 Bank Branches. The Board had provided advance registration arrangements through 426 branches of Punjab National Bank, Jammu and Kashmir Bank and YES Bank enabling the pilgrims to register themselves for
Yatra 2014.
This advance registration facility was made available from March 1 onwards and, as of now, 2,41,464 pilgrims have received advance registration.
(UNI)
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