Avinash Azad
Every year, million of pilgrims visit the holy shrine of Mata Vaishno Devi, which has put Katra on the global religious map. However, the town’s civic management tells a different story.
A lot of the Asia Chowk–Reasi road, which is one of the main ways to get to the pilgrimage town, has become an open dumping ground for trash, scrap, and construction debris. This is a big problem for the environment and public health.
People who live and work along this stretch say that the city is dumping trash, plastic, scrap metal, and rubble from Katra town without care. It gets even worse when the trash flows downhill into the Ban Ganga, a holy body of water that pilgrims and locals both love.
Not only is Ban Ganga a part of Katra’s spiritual history, but it is also an important natural water source. The stream is polluted because people have thrown away trash and other things. This threatens its purity and the balance of the ecosystem. A local said, “People come here thinking this water is holy, but what they don’t see is that garbage from the town is slowly poisoning it.”
Every year, massive influx of pilgrims walk through Katra, but many parts of the city, especially the Asia Chowk to Reasi road, don’t have good civic management. The Municipal Committee Katra has made a serious mistake by not regularly collecting, monitoring, and enforcing waste collection. This has turned the area into a dumping ground.
Environmental experts say that dumping solid waste and construction debris without permission can pollute groundwater, harm the quality of the soil, and cause long-term damage to the environment. Such carelessness could also hurt tourism and public health in a sensitive pilgrimage town like Katra.
The Jammu and Kashmir Pollution Control Board and the District Administration, Reasi are now being asked to take action right away. Activists and locals are asking the government to check out the areas that were affected, stop more dumping, clean up the polluted sites, and punish the Municipal Committee Katra for not doing its job when it comes to the law and the environment.
“This town is important to the faith of millions. Letting trash build up and pollute Ban Ganga is not just careless; it is an insult to public trust,” a social activist said. If action isn’t taken quickly, what should be a clean and holy entrance to one of India’s most popular temples could become a sign of civic decay and environmental neglect.
Rakesh Wazir, President of the Hotel Association in Katra, was very worried about how bad the condition of the pilgrim route was getting. He said that the holy town’s sanctity must be protected. “Every day, millions of pilgrims walk this path, but there are piles of trash and construction debris along the road. “That’s very sad and makes the town look bad, especially since it has a lot of religious meaning,” he said.
When asked, Rajat Abrol, the Executive Officer of the Municipal Committee in Katra, said that the area in question is not under the MC’s jurisdiction. However, the committee has started looking for those responsible for dumping trash and construction debris after getting many complaints from the public.
The Rural Development Department and the Katra Development Authority (KDA) are mostly in charge of the area because it is outside the Municipal Committee’s limits. Sadly, the Rural Development Department doesn’t have a good way to handle trash in the area. The enforcement wing, on the other hand, is always running operations to find people who break the law. “Once the offenders are found, notices can be sent out under the Solid Waste Management Act,” Abrol said. Piyush Dhotra, SDM Katra, said that many departments are working on the problem and that steps are being taken to fix it. He said, “The necessary coordination has begun, and the area will be free of trash and construction debris within a week.”
But when we tried to get in touch with MLA Katra, Baldev Raj Sharma, again and again to get his opinion on the matter, he did not respond. As the elected representative of the area, it is very important for him to step in and get the J&K government to pay attention to the need for a permanent and long-term solution to the growing waste problem along the Asia Chowk–Reasi road.
People who care about the environment and the community think that instead of letting people dump trash on the side of the road, these areas can be scientifically reclaimed and turned into green belts or public parks. This would not only restore the sanctity of the town where pilgrims go, but it would also make it look and feel better.
