With Covid on a killing spree, JK Tourism drains Crores for inviting tourists
NL Correspondent, Jammu Tawi, April 25: The rampant rise of COVID-19 cases and the soaring deaths have sent the Centre and State Govts into a tizzy. When the nation has been hit by an unprecedented emergency since 2020, it is only expected of the administrative machinery to make decisions for the safety of people and primarily to judiciously spend public money.
While this should be the norm, the Jammu Kashmir Tourism Department in defiance has been organizing Road-shows across India only with a purpose and intent to spend the public money at the close end of financial year from the Advertising and Publicity grant-2020-21. Spending millions from the public exchequer in today’s context on tourism trade-shows and road-shows is worth the questionable expenses during grim and deteriorating Covid situation and when over eighty per cent of people use the internet to plan their travel itinerary.
Secretary, Department of Tourism, Union Territory of Jammu Kashmir vide his letters 19/JK (TSM) dated 19th February and 25/(TSM) dated 24th February 2021 sanctioned twenty Road Shows, ten each for the Directorate of Tourism Jammu and Directorate of Tourism Kashmir respectively at the fag-end of this financial year. Withou
With Covid on a killing spree, JK Tourism drains Crores for inviting tourists
t defining the Road-Show format, the schedules of these Road-shows to be held in various cities of India were rolled out for the registered and credible Associations actually engaged in ‘Travel Trade’ in Jammu and Kashmir valley. These events were to commence from March 04 to March 13 by Director Tourism Jammu and from March 03 to March 27 by Director Tourism Kashmir.
Sources revealed to The Northlines that out of many of these participating travel associations are a permutation of common members within the respective division and have indulged in cartelization. Although the same is not illegal, it is certainly frowned upon. This somehow never garnered the attention of the Tourism department at Jammu as well as at Kashmir, who were duty-bound, ex-officio and as per the term of sanction to spot such possible mischief.
Credentials, as deemed necessary, of some associations assigned with these one-day Road-show events were under shadow, reliable sources from inside the department informed. These travel trade associations as stakeholders are said to be into activities of Travel Agents, Tour Operators, Hotel, Lodges and Restaurants, Adventure Sport etc.
Interestingly, on similar and simultaneous recommendations of Tourism Directorates of Kashmir and Jammu, Road Shows events at twenty cities of India were sanction starting from Feb 23. The responsibility of holding Road-Shows was distributed among the local associations engaged in Travel Trade of the respective division against a budget amount of Rs. Seven lakh for each Road-show to be reimbursed after submission of respective bills and fulfilling other stipulated Codal formalities.
It is alleged that the process of reimbursement of the inflated claims of about Rs. Seven lakh each to the individual Association has been completed without observing the Codal formalities like submission of proper bills for the expenses incurred on account of organizing these Road-show events and also observing the norms under GST and TDS regimes and their updation in the records of respective registrars of societies.
With an intention to favour some, the Department defying its priorities amid COVID times, and in a bid to exhaust the public money in all awareness, went ahead to authorize the participants to organize the roadshows across India.
This is not all; The Northlines has learnt that the Department has been in the practice of clearing the bills without considering the codal formalities in the past too. A retired official from the Tourism department, on condition of not to be named, said that the public money which has been put at the disposal of the Tourism department is only being misused for the reasons unknown but well understood to all. There has been no objective ‘Impact Assessments’ ever done for such programmes as to how useful these were? ‘It’s ironical that when COVID is on its killing spree, the Administration is finding excuses to spend public money on such shows which could be otherwise utilized for something more promising in these testing times,’ he said.
Contact persons of two associations told Northlines that their expenditure is more than the sponsorship amount under this scheme and denied any anomaly in holding events and their claimed expenses.
The director of tourism Jammu did not respond to the phone calls and SMS message on Friday and Saturday on the subject for the official version.
This only questions the viability of the whole project as the ones participating and the public at large to whom the money belongs is drained.
