Pilgrims coming to Uttarakhand can now easily move to Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri shrines as the state government has discontinued its policy of rationing footfalls and allowing only a fixed number of devotees to visit these temples.

Offline registrations for the same day are now easily available for the pilgrims as the crowd on the roads have come down substantially.

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State officials looking after the chardham pilgrimage have said that the government’s policy of quantifying pilgrims’ strength to travel to the chardham shrines Gangotri, Yunotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath has been lifted.

They claimed that pilgrims planning to visit these shrines can now get registration and permits for journeys on the same day. According to them, the decision to do away with the mandatory fixed number of registrations for chardham pilgrimage was taken as the devotees’ footfalls and the huge backlog of permissions that existed earlier, have considerably thinned.

In fact, officials said there is no backlog of the registrations done in the past and the pilgrims reaching straight to Haridwar and Rishikesh, can get travel permits without online registrations.

“Registration backlog of the devotees in Rishikesh and Haridwar for Chardham Yatra has now reduced to zero. Devotees coming straight to Rishikesh and Haridwar are getting on-the-spot registrations and allowed to travel to Chardham shrines. Earlier policy of fixing a definite number of registrations a day, no longer exists” said Vinay Shankar Pandey, secretary to Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami.

Meanwhile, the Chief Minister on Tuesday instructed the officials to have better coordination with the district magistrates for adequate management and further improvisation of the Chardham pilgrimage facilities.

Dhami asked senior officials to conduct field inspections as to the travel arrangements made for the devotees.

The Chief Minister directed that duties and responsibilities of the officials must be fixed and regular meetings be held with temple officials, transporters, tour operators and other stakeholders. Dhami further instructed the officials to start plying 42-seater buses in the hills in the interests of the local public as well as those coming from outside.