Our Take
The second wave of a pandemic is causing anxiety all around and rightly so. The unfortunate part is that it seems a good number of careless people are indulging in acts that are nothing short of courting corona. For some days past, the number of fresh cases reported daily in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has been in excess of 1,000. Yet, what amazed is the nonchalance with which people go around, often in public places, without masks, violating social distancing norms and other things.
Divisional Commissioner Raghav Langar personally took stock of the special facilities required at Lakhanpur for handling in-bound people on Thursday. Senior officials of Kathua district accompanied him to this entry point which can become a serious bottleneck if it is not managed well, rather very well. That requires placing a lot of additional staff, particularly for conducting tests as also managing the crowds. If truth be told, management of crowds at Lakhanpur is always a challenging task.
The pandemic viral infection has made it compulsory to stem the ingress of people but with a soft hand. Our economy depends a lot on pilgrims thronging Shri Mata Vaishno Devi as they spend money on petrol pumps, roadside Dhaba, hotels and elsewhere. A good number of people are also headed by road via Lakhanpur towards Kashmir region for a variety of reasons. All this makes it a very critical point where top-class facilities are needed for the inbound people. It is interesting that the administration will be notifying paid quarantine facilities soon, something that reminds us of the last year. It is eerily similar to what was happening in 2020 also all over the UT, the nation and most parts of the world.
People who were entering the UT last year had complained about the inadequate facilities at Lakhanpur. Slowly, the facilities were enhanced and leading the teams there were two outstanding officers, Ajit Sahoo, and Arun Manhas. Sahoo has since been transferred to UT of Ladakh but the protocols the two officers had created with support from field staff are still in place.
