New Delhi: A little over five months after the Pahalgam terror attack, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah Sunday said that the Baisaran valley was a ticketed destination, the contract for which had been awarded by the L-G’s office a year before the attack.
Omar was speaking at the launch of journalist Harinder Baweja’s book They Will Shoot You Madam: My Life Through Conflict, at the Kamala Devi Complex at India International Centre here.
“Baisaran was in the second year of its operation as a contracted, ticketed destination. More than 70,000 people had already visited Baisaran before the attack in Pahalgam took place. And 70,000 people don’t visit the location without the police knowing what’s happening,” Omar said.
Omar shared the stage with former Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh.
During the book launch, journalist Rajdeep Sardesai who was moderating referred to Omar’s on-record statement in the book about the Pahalgam attack. Omar reiterated that his government had no role to play in Baisaran’s opening, since the order had come from the L-G’s office.
“The speculation that my government had somehow been careless in opening Baisaran to tourists without permission or without the knowledge of the security forces is not true,” he said.
The chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir further alleged that the central government distorted facts by claiming that Baisaran was opened only during the Amarnath Yatra. “The reverse is true. Baisaran was only closed during the Amarnath Yatra because security forces were deployed elsewhere. It was closed only because of the snow or during the Yatra.”
Speaking about the meadow in Pahalgam where a group of terrorists killed 25 civilians and one local ponywallah on 22 April, Omar said the area had been open to tourists for eight to nine months each year. “Nobody pays a crore a year for a small meadow in the mountains if it’s going to be open for just a month. One crore a year was paid to the tourism department, and all this was done with the knowledge of the L-G…”
Criticising the Centre, Omar said the government had feigned ignorance and distorted facts. “The central government knew that Baisaran was an open, ticketed destination that tourists visited regularly. They simply chose to ignore that knowledge once the Pahalgam attack happened.”
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)