Jammu, July 2: The influx of thousands of unregistered Amarnath bound pilgrims is becoming a major challenge for the administration to ensure smooth conduct of annual pilgrimage to the cave shrine in South Kashmir.
Official sources said out of total number of pilgrims who had darshan at the cave shrine during last three days 80 percent were unregistered.
They said that administration is surprised that how nearly 67,000 people had darshan of the ice lingam in just three days. “This is unimaginable figure and it seems many of them were already putting up in Valley, before the official start of the pilgrimage”, they added.
“Administration is facing an uphill task of preventing the unregistered people moving towards the valley as they are the main reason for the heavy rush at Baltal and Pahalgam. So far every effort seems to fail, but everything will be done to prevent them,” said an official.
While admitting that the huge rush of unregistered pilgrims has snowballed into a major problem for the administration, Divisional Commissioner Jammu, Pawan Kotwal said, “So far 80 per cent of the people who paid their obeisance at the cave shrine were unregistered. We have geared to stop them and they will be allowed only after the rush of registered pilgrims subsidies”, Kotwal said.
 “The administration of each districts through which the highway  passes are closely coordinating with each other to check unregistered pilgrims,  while  police is also scanning and stopping the vehicles,” he said.
Officials said a number of people have managed to reach Baltal and Pahalgam without mandatory registration from the very first day of June 29, when the pilgrimage started officially, which has created ‘chaos like situation’ at these base camps forcing the administration in Jammu to suspend the yatra on Saturday.
Meanwhile, traffic was yet again disrupted on Jammu Srinagar highway (near Dumel ) for more than an hour after police stopped number of vehicles carrying unregistered yatris mainly from Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and other neighboring states.
Reports said that nearly 1,000 Amarnath-bound pilgrims have been stopped at Udhampur, Nagrota, Ramban and Patnitop areas and provided lodging facilities since last night.
A total of 67,258 pilgrims offered prayers and had ‘darshan’ of the naturally formed ice-shivlingam at the 3,880 metre high cave shrine of Amarnath in the past three days.

Lastupdate on : Sat, 2 Jul 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sat, 2 Jul 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sun, 3 Jul 2011 00:00:00 IST