Mubarak Mandi ropeway project in limbo, no info on JKCCC website

Tribune News Service

Jammu, December 27

It may come as a surprise but the much-hyped Mubarak Mandi-Bahu Fort cable car project in Jammu does not find any mention on the official website of the Jammu and Kashmir Cable Car Corporation (JKCCC) — www.jkccc.com.

The project was conceived in 1996 during the tenure of then Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, however, it is yet to see the light of the day.

Pointing to the delay in project, president, All Jammu Hotels and Lodges Association, Inderjeet Khajuria said: “There is many a slip between the cup and the lip.”

To be constructed at a revised cost of Rs 30 crore, the ropeway project across the Tawi will connect Mubarak Mandi with the Bahu Fort. But till date, only two pillars have been erected on the banks of the Tawi under the project.

Khajuria, however, said even those two pillars were damaged in heavy rain in September last year.

“They remain tilted since September rain in 2014…the government has only dug two more pits near the existing pillars,” he said.

The JKCCC website has no information on tourist resorts and cable cars in Jammu and Kashmir. What it has in the name of information is the official address of organisation’s head office at Rambagh in Srinagar and regional office near the Peer Kho temple here.

When it comes to Jammu, successive governments, including the present PDP-BJP dispensation, has no plans to promote tourism, Khajuria alleged. He said for the past two decades successive state governments had been “hoodwinking” people of Jammu in the name of cable car project and artificial lake.

The one paragraph that briefs about the corporation reads: “Jammu and Kashmir Cable Car Corporation had been established by the state government in 1988 with an authorised capital of Rs 2,500 lakhs to establish, run, manage and administer ropeways and cable car project at Gulmarg; to establish and carry on the business of cable car at other tourist resorts; to develop necessary infrastructure and common facilities at different places in order to promote tourism; to establish, construct, lease out or acquire on its own ropeways and cable cars at other tourist places and to take over the running business of the Gulmarg Cable Car Project.”