(The Pioneer)
In the aftermath of the horrific killing of 26 tourists in Baisaran meadow of Pahalgam on April 22, the passenger traffic by air has dropped to roughly 50 per cent at the Srinagar airport.
According to the data shared by the Srinagar airport authorities on their official page on X, “4619 passengers landed in Srinagar via 53 flights on April 26, and only 28 passengers arrived there in three additional flights”.
Compared to this, over 53000 passengers headed back (between April 22-26) after the attack, which killed 26 tourists and left 17 others wounded.
Before the Pahalgam massacre, Srinagar airport witnessed an average arrival of 8600 to 9200 passengers between April 17 to April 22. In contrast, 4456 passengers landed in Srinagar on April 24, 4240 on April 25, and 4619 on April 26.
The day the terror attack took place, 9235 passengers arrived in Srinagar, 9640 on April 21, and 8194 on April 19.
Amid escalating tensions between India and Pakistan, the tourist footfall has drastically gone down, and the main tourist hot spots in the valley present a deserted look.
Compared to Pahalgam, tourist places like Gulmarg, Sonamarg, and Srinagar are still recording tourist footfall, but Pahalgam is still waiting for the tourists to return.
On Sunday, famous actor Atul Kulkarni landed in Jammu and Kashmir with an appeal to fellow citizens to visit the Himalayan region in huge numbers. Kulkarni reached Srinagar on Sunday early morning and drove straight to Pahalgam.
“The terror attack was intended to tell tourists not to come to Kashmir. If we cancel our plans to travel to Kashmir, we are in a way allowing the intentions of the terrorists to succeed,” the actor said.
On Sunday morning, Kulkarni posted photographs of a virtually empty Mumbai-Srinagar flight.
“The crew said these flights were full. We need to fill them again (sic)” he wrote in a post on X, with hashtags such as ‘Chalo Kashmir’, ‘Defeat Terror’, ‘Feet in Kashmir’.
The tour managers in the valley have received several requests to cancel the scheduled visits in the absence of any advisory to tourists suggesting whether it is safe to travel to Jammu and Kashmir under the prevailing circumstances.
Both the United States and the United Kingdom have issued a similar advisory, asking its citizens not to travel within 10 km of India and Pakistan’s border areas due to rising tensions between the two neighbours.
These countries have advised their citizens against all travel to the region of Jammu and Kashmir (including Pahalgam, Gulmarg, Sonamarg, the city of Srinagar and the Jammu-Srinagar national highway) except for travel by air to and from the city of Jammu, travel within the city of Jammu, travel within the Union Territory of Ladakh.”
