Lahaul-Spiti admn may issue tourist permits from Manali

Dipender Manta

Tribune News Service

Kullu, June 27

Fed up with frequent complaints from tourists over difficulty in taking online permits to visit beyond Rohtang to Lahaul-Spiti and Leh-Ladakh, the district administration of Lahaul-Spiti is planning to open its camp office at Manali to provide permit to tourists manually.

Talking to The Tribune, Deputy Commissioner, Lahaul-Spiti, Deva Singh Negi said, “We are planning to start a camp office at Manali to give permits to those, who wants to visit Lahaul-Spiti.”

“However, the final decision will be taken after discussions with the district administration, Kullu,” he remarked. There were frequent complaints that the tourists visiting Lahaul-Spiti and Leh-Ladakh were facing difficulty in getting online permit because a limited number of permits were available.

Chander Mohan Parsheera, coordinator of the Chandra-Bhaga Sangam Parv Samiti in Lahaul Spiti, alleged that the Kullu administration had imposed a cap of 800 permits on visiting Lahaul-Spiti, however, according to the National Green Tribunal directions, there was not such restriction.

He said most of the permits were taken by taxi operators of Kullu-Manali as well as those tourists, who just returned from Rohtang. Those who were interested to visit Lahaul-Spiti or Leh-Ladakh were facing difficulty in availing the permits.

“We want the local administration of Lahaul-Spiti to come forward to deal with the situation and issue permit to those, who really wanted to visit Lahaul-Spiti or Leh-Ladakh. There should be proper mechanism to identify the actual tourist,” he added.

Deputy Commissioner, Kullu, Yunus Khan, said there was no such cap to avail online permit to visit beyond Rohtang after paying congestion charges. In case of emergency, the authorities were providing permit manually also. He added that tourists could avail the permit easily online.