Srinagar (NVI): The central government is making better efforts to tap the tourism potential of Jammu and Kashmir, Union Minister of State for Tourism and Culture, Prahlad Singh Patel said today.
The Union Minister was addressing a tourism conference titled, ‘‘Tapping the Potential of Kashmir: Another day in Paradise’, at Sher-i-Kashmir International Convention Centre here.
He said all the stakeholders have been invited to meet, discuss and give suggestions to create better tourism infrastructure in entire J&K to improve the flow of tourists into Jammu and Kashmir.
“I think after the abrogation of Article 370 and other subsequent developmental works taken with respect to the tourism sector, the number of tourists visiting here has increased and this has made us think of giving a makeover to the already existing tourism places here,” Patel said.
Also present on the occasion, Advisor to Lieutenant Governor, Baseer Khan said that after COVID pandemic, we did lot of activities to restore tourism activities here. Several webinars and various strategies were adopted in this direction.
He said today he can proudly say of what they made as a humble beginning has started to yield results as there was a sudden spurt of influx of tourists in winters in Kashmir and also in Jammu which encouraged them to go a bit further more and in the depth of the winter, tourism was its one of the highest best, there was no place vacant in Kashmir even the houseboats were booked.
“This gave me satisfaction that tourism has revived in Jammu and Kashmir,” he said.
“We have been able to give it a further push for the coming summers, I can assure that another 3-4 months when entire country will be blistering with temperature the tourist coming to this place will increase manifold and it will give impetus to our economy,” he said.
He said under Swadesh Darshan and PRASAD Scheme, a number of projects have been taken up and many of these projects are at the verge of completion. The private players have to come forward to do the handholding to the UT Govt and help in creating better infrastructure.
–PRT/ARK
