E Arun and Tarun Karteek
Port Blair, Feb 03: The Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) today blamed Andaman and Nicobar Administration for the Andaman Trunk Road Crisis, which resulted in banning of all tourists vehicles in ATR recently.
“It is very it is very unfortunate because the A&N administration has not placed the real facts before the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India,” said Prakash Javadekar, the National Spokesperson of BJP while addressing a press conference at Port Blair this evening.
On 21 January 2013, the Supreme Court had banned tourists from taking the Andaman Trunk Road, the lone National Highway of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, that passes through the area where the Jarawas live.
Andaman Trunk Road, also known as National 223 (NH 223), connects Port Blair with North and Middle Andaman and is also considered as the life line of North and Middle Andaman.
Assuring media that the matter will be taken up by him in Parliament very soon Javadekar added that there are many popular tourist destinations in Baratang Island, like the Parrot Island and the Limestone Caves, where tourists won’t be able to reach now due to closure of ATR for all tourism activities.
“Many people are Associated with the tourism industry and because of this ban, hundreds of people will now become unemployed once again,” he added.
He added that there are many other ways in which the administration can regulate the convoy system without hampering the tourism activities.
On the issue of Mr. Sushil Kumar Shinde’s statement on RSS promoting Hindu Terrorism, the National Spokesperson of BJP firmly said that Mr. Shinde has to apologize for what he has said because he could not produce any proof to support his statement.
“Mr.Shinde is the first man on earth to relate religions with terrorism. People are fuming on Shinde’s statement while Pakistan is very happy with it,” he said
Speaking on the Jaipur session of congress he said, there are only two achievements of the Jaipur session of Congress. One is the declaration of hereditary and the other is Shinde’s statement.
Speaking on the issue of Coastal Zone Regulation in A & N Islands and Environmental regulation issue he said the regulations are hampering the development of a territory like Andaman and Nicobar Islands which have 96% forest cover. He further added that many of the defence proposals are now pending just because of these regulations.
Many other questions were also raised by different sections of media and many matters were also highlighted infront of him, which he said he will raise in the Parliament, the matters raised by the media were poachers coming in from Myanmar and Bangladesh, submerged land compensation etc.
