SASB suspends registration of Amarnath yatra due to COVID-19

The Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board has suspended registrations for the annual Amarnath Yatra because of the surge in Covid-19 cases.

“The situation is being constantly monitored and it would be reopened once the situation improves,” a board official said on Thursday.

The annual pilgrimage was not held in the last two years. In 2019, the yatra was suspended a few days before the August 5 decision to abrogate the special status to Jammu & Kashmir and the bifurcation of the state into the union territories of J&K and Ladakh. That year, the administration had ordered non-local tourists and laborers to leave the Valley immediately. In 2020, the administration initially planned to organise the yatra amid the Covid-19 pandemic, but later rescinded the decision.


Officials said for now only the registration process has been suspended while there has been no call over the pilgrimage so far.

The administration had planned to make preparations for 6 lakh pilgrims this year.

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Former J&K minister and senior BJP member Thakur Puran Singh, 85, who had recently returned from the Kumbh Mela, died of Covid-19 while he was being taken to Chandigarh for treatment.

Singh, a resident of Rajouri district of Jammu, was unwell since his return from Haridwar, where he attended the religious congregation.

In 2002, he won as an independent candidate and was a minister of state in the then PDP-Congress coalition government in J&K. In 2014, he joined the BJP and was made a member of the party’s state executive committee.