Amarnath: The Jammu and Kashmir administration officially suspended the annual Amarnath Yatra on Sunday along both the Pahalgam and Baltal tracks following an urgent weather advisory issued by the India Meteorological Department. The preventive measures were introduced after the weather agency predicted widespread and heavy rainfall across the Union Territory, posing serious safety concerns for the thousands of devotees travelling through the high-altitude terrain. Under the latest safety directives, all forward movement from the essential Baltal and Nunwan base camps has been halted, while transit convoys departing from the Bhagwati Nagar base camp in Jammu have been grounded until path evaluations are completed by regional authorities.
The environmental suspension follows consecutive transit mishaps along the crucial Jammu-Srinagar National Highway over the past week. Early Saturday morning, a Toyota Innova ferrying pilgrims toward the northern Baltal base camp crashed into a stationary dumper truck parked along the roadside at Sangoor Chowk in the Udhampur district. Local emergency teams rushed to the site immediately following the collision, safely rescuing the trapped occupants and transferring the injured pilgrims to the Associated Hospital at Government Medical College in Udhampur for urgent medical intervention.
The Udhampur collision marks the second major vehicular accident involving pilgrims this month, following a separate pile-up on July 13 near the Chanderkote Langar Point in the Ramban district. That incident involved a multi-vehicle collision between a private car and two state-run transit buses, resulting in injuries to eighteen devotees who required emergency treatment at the regional district hospital. Security forces have since escalated night patrolling and highway check-ins to secure transit routes for the remainder of the 57-day pilgrimage, which commenced on July 3 and is slated to conclude on August 28.
