Excelsior Correspondent
KATRA, Nov 27: Hotel & Restaurant Association Katra, in a meeting held here today under the chairmanship of its president Rakesh Wazir and co-chaired by Shyam Lal Kesar strongly condemned the State Government for not giving any representation to Jammu in the recently constituted Tourism Advisory Board.
All the Tourist places of Jammu region, including Katra, Patnitop, Bhaderwah, Mansar, Surinsar, Shiv Khori, Man Talai etc have been ignored and intentionally all the elected Associations of Hotels, Restaurants and Travel Agents were categorically denied of any representation so that none could raise any point of development of Tourist places of Jammu region, the meet observed and lamented that despite the seat of Government in Jammu at present, Advisory Board’s first ever meeting was held at Pahalgam, Kashmir, as if Jammu region was not capable of holding a Tourism Advisory Board meeting.
Mr Wazir said that despite Katra being contributing 80 percent of the tourists of the State, it has been ignored in the said representative body. This depicts the non seriousness of Government towards Tourism and that is the reason that tourism is not flourishing here in the State.
Mr Kesar said that in all previous Tourism Advisory Boards the elected Associations of Tourism related bodies including Hotels, Guest Houses, Lodges, House Boats, Restaurants, Travel Agents used to get representation with the idea of receiving ground feed back but in the newly constituted Board, not even a single prominent elected body of Tourism related trade of Jammu region could get place.
Mr Wazir and Mr Kesar stressed that if the Government was really interested in revival of the Tourism in the State, it should scrap this Board immediately and constitute the fresh Board with members connected with J&K Tourism Industry and particularly the representatives of the elected Associations.
The meeting, among others, was attended by Virender Kesar, Harish Dubey, Vishal Sharma, Vivek Sharma, Karan Wazir, Sumit Khajuria, Nishant Sharma, Rohit Dubey, Prabhat Singh and Kuldeep Sharma.
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