Early Times Report
Katra, June 13: Notwithstanding the rumours of a terror threat on the Yatra and recent incidents of devastating forest fires in Trikuta Hills, the revered shrine of Mata Vaishno Devi in Katra is witnessing unprecedented rush of pilgrims, whose number crossed all previous records yesterday.
Due to summer vacations, the number of devotees reaching Katra for darshan of Mata Vaishno Devi has almost doubled thus creating problem to manage the huge rush even as the Police and Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board were trying their best to control the situation by putting special deployment from Katra to Bhawan.
Besides special deployment of District Police Reasi, extra manpower from CRPF has been engaged in the town while the Shrine Board is also coordinating in managing the crowd. Further, the Traffic police has also been requested to deploy special team for traffic management in the town while all nakas have been alerted and eye is being kept on the movement of passers-by through CCTVs, informed SSP Reasi Sujit Kumar.
Pertinent to mention that the pilgrimage to Mata Vaishno Devi created a new record on Sunday when 51,191 devotees left Katra for the holy cave shrine. This figure was highest ever on a single day. Even on Monday, the yatra number was nearing the yesterday's record and had been increasing. |
