STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: Congress leader Nawang Rigzin Jora on Tuesday hit out at the Mufti Mohammed Sayeed government for keeping Leh out of the proposal of daily chartered flights from Delhi, calling it a result of “political consideration.
“Of all the three regions, Leh, in fact, has the biggest problem of accessibility and exorbitant air-fare and the department and the Mufti Sayeed government chose to ignore Leh on political consideration,” Jora said.
Jora accused Mufti Sayeed of pettiness, after his party, PDP’s dismal performance in the Leh-Ladakh region.
“I cannot think of any other reason than the Chief Minister not being too happy with Leh (Ladakh) for not supporting his party in the election where his candidate got mere 800 votes,” Jora said.
The state government had proposed yesterday to operate three flights daily from Delhi to Srinagar via Jammu where passengers will have to shell Rs 5,000 irrespective of whether the journey ends in Jammu or in Srinagar, as per a senior government official. Jora welcomed the move though he questioned the reason as to why Leh was kept out of the plan.
“The idea of charter flight is to make the airfare competitive and incentivise those tourists for whom the high air-fare proves to be a big deterrent.
“The tourism department needs to be complimented and lauded but why tourism department has not included Leh for charter flights when they know Leh’s problem has been accessibility and exorbitant air fares, going upto Rs 30,000 one way in July,” he asked, accusing the government of being biased in approach to the three regions.
