Lucknow: A day after UP’s Urban Development and Minority Affairs Minister Azam Khan said the Taj Mahal should be declared a property of the state’s Waqf Board, the state tourism minister on Wednesday said, between 2012 and 2013, the number of tourists has seen a dip of more than 10 per cent.
“While 4.5 lakh tourists visited the Taj Mahal in 2012, this number went down to around 4 lakh in 2013,” Tourism Minister Om Prakash Singh said in the state Assembly in a reply to a question by Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MLA Dharmpal Singh.
And the current year is no better – 2014 has already seen a dip of more than 15% till date, the minister admitted.
The BSP MLA said, “The government is not comfortable in furnishing the latest details but I believe that tourists fear going to Agra because of rising crime in the state and lack of facilities. The SP government has written to the Centre to start e-ticketing system but the state government is not ready to take the responsibility to instill confidence in tourists visiting Agra.”
Singh added that the minister was talking about only those tourists who stay in Agra overnight. “His figures don’t include those who reach Agra in the morning and leave the same day after seeing the 17th Century monument,” he said.
On Tuesday, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to start an e-ticketing system to visit the World Heritage site.
State BJP leaders have reacted to this move and said the Centre is all set to provide several facilities to tourists visiting the state and the CM was simply trying to cash in on that.
Meanwhile, Agra BJP MP and Union Minister Ramshankar Katheria has also shot off a letter to Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari demanding setting up of Agra Development Foundation and construction of bypass roads.
He said from among the 80 lakh tourists who visit Agra every year, over 8 lakh come from foreign countries but they face problem because of unsafe and haphazard traffic.
“The UP government had planned a by-pass road project in 2011. But nothing was done to realize the project,” he said. Katheria also met Civil Aviation MoS Mahesh Sharma on Wednesday and demanded to start an Agra-Mumbai air service at the earliest.
The management of Taj Mahal is carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). The Supreme Court in December 1996 had put a ban on use of coal and coke in the Taj Trapezium Zone which comprises of 40 protected monuments, including the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri.
