Suspension of air traffic at the Srinagar airport for the second consecutive day on Wednesday due to poor visibility caused as a result of snowfall has made hundreds of tourists getting stranded in Srinagar.

Officials in the tourism department said that a good number of tourists had arrived in Kashmir for celebrating New Year and were home bound now.

Air traffic between Srinagar and rest of the country remained affected for the second consecutive day due to inclement weather as intermittent snowfall was reported from most parts of the valley and higher reaches of Jammu. The plains had heavy rains badly hitting electric supply.

Srinagar Airport said on twitter that several flights to Delhi, Jammu and Leh have been cancelled.

“Poor visibility due to light snow prevails at our airport. Following flights have been cancelled till now:- Indigo 137 to Delhi, Indigo 6738 to Jammu, Indigo 2015 to Delhi, Indigo 2364 to Delhi, GoFirst 358 to Delhi, GoFirst 193 to Delhi, GoFirst 267 to Delhi and Vistara 611 to Jammu,” a tweet by Srinagar Airport said.

An official of the Srinagar airport tweeted; “The process for installation of CAT II ILS will commence in Apr 2022 and will be completed by Nov 2022.

Hopefully, next winter, our visibility requirement will reduce from 900 M to 500 M”.

It has been snowing in most places of the valley intermittently over the past few days but the arterial Srinagar-Jammu national highway is open for vehicular traffic. However, shooting stones were reported from hill top at many places along the highway between Ramban and Banihal.

One person was killed and another seriously injured when a shooting stone hit their car in the Ramban sector.

The traffic department has advised motorists to exercise caution while travelling on the national highway in view of the snowfall and shooting stones.

Normal life has been thrown out of gear as several roads were cut off due to snow. District officials were trying to clear the snow.
Intermittent rains in Jammu also hit electric supply in many areas.

Meanwhile, Youth National Conference Provincial President, Ajaz Jan has alleged that the administration has failed to make winter stocking of kerosene and rations in the Poonch district. Power supply was also erratic, he claimed.