We have been, of and on, laying emphasis on tapping numerous places with lot of tourism related potential around Jammu division. The need is to develop these places by providing the basic infrastructure and putting them on the portals of tourism related information. Most of us must be looking at Lakhanpur, the entry gate to Jammu , from the point of mandatory temporary stoppage of buses moving out or entering Jammu to enable passengers visit tea- coffee shops etc. The fact of the matter is that one could visit various places of tourist importance starting from here. There are many interesting scenic places including of religious importance to be visited like Jasrota Fort, Narsingh Dev Temple, Bagwan Vishnu Temple and many more. Perhaps, keeping in view the huge tourism potential, the State Government had established Development Authorities of Lakhanpur, Sarthal and Bani-Basohli in 2005 and 2017 respectively.
Needless to add, many few of us must be knowing about the importance of Bani valley from the tourism point of view. It is called as ‘Mini Kashmir’ and it was planned long back to develop it to an extent of generating enough tourist turnout. Development Authorities were established specifically for that purpose but it is beyond comprehension to find that these two Development Authorities are running just for the name sake as neither do they have Chief Executive Officers nor the reasonably minimum required staff . It can well be gauged as to the likely fate of the developmental works undertaken by these offices and the likely impact on the purpose of such works. Can it be believed under normal course , that even a period of ten years is inadequate for completing a low budgeted building and toilet complex constructed by Lakhanpur -Sarthal Development Authority (LSDA) at Lakhanpur to provide boarding and lodging facilities to tourists and pilgrims ? The LSDA is running without the designated Head , a full fledged CEO for the last over a year and the additional charge of the same is lying with Joint Director Tourism. It is surprisingly learnt that out of 24 Development Authorities functioning in the State, only 10 have full time CEOs while others are without any top authority which are indicative of the Government being just non serious and perhaps unresponsive to the emerging needs and requirements in respect of the subject matter.
Since performance and achieving different targets of works should be the aim of the departments run by the Government depending upon their nature and the structure, in the absence of the responsible top authority and the staff strength along with proper monitoring from concerned authorities, the very idea of expecting any satisfactory work and performing results appear to be redundant. No opportunity should be lost by the Government to tap and exploit any such opportunity which beside other factors, results in generating employment and ancillary business activities. These two offshoots of any governmental activity should never be allowed to get flittered away and ultimately lost. Instead of focussing attention on improving the basic infrastructure , patch work approach and ad hoc short time solutions employed which are tantamount to just passing the time and hence being purely unproductive.
As if such a type of mismanagement of these two Development Authorities was any less, the confusion and the mess are accentuated by the issue of nomenclature of Lakhanpur- Sarthal Development Authority as the Government changed it to Billawar- Duggan Development Authority . On the other hand, tenders are issued and notifications etc made, all in the old name. Not only this, there appears to be ambiguity and confusion over the notification of areas for the Development Authority. This further baffles and confuses the public about the jurisdiction and the areas notified to be developed by the concerned authority. Will the Government pay necessary heed towards rejuvenating the twin Authorities and appraising their work and contribution towards development of tourism?
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