Prospects of tourism in NE highlighted

Tourism &Travel Column Vol. 3 Issue No. 26

May 1-15, 2007

Prospects of tourism in NE highlighted

Manipur Tourism Director BB Sharma said tourism potentials in the State can be developed on the backdrop of its cultural strengths, games and sports, diversity of the people, etc. Sharma was speaking at the concurrent session 2 –“Horizons of Heaven – Opportunities in the Tourism Sector” on the last day of the 3rd North East Business Summit.

In the session chaired by Lt. Gen (Retd) Ajai Singh, Governor of Assam, the Tourism Director asserted that the Restricted Area Permit system has become a major obstruction towards the development of tourism in the State. He urged the Centre to lift all the restrictions in the State.

He stated that there is no Inner Line Permit system in Manipur but if a tourist wants to visit Manipur on surface transport, he or she requires to obtain it in passing through the territory of Nagaland.

In the session, H S Das, Commissioner (Tourism) of Government of Assam said Restricted Area Permit system was lifted in the State since 1995. N C Sinha, Secretary (Tourism), Government of Tripura also revealed that there were no restrictions of RAP or Inner Line Permit in Tripura.

The Union Tourism Secretary A K Mishra stated that Ministry of Tourism was conscious about the existence of restricted measures such as Protected Area Permits/Restricted Area Permits/ Inner Line Permits that had become a major constraint in the development of tourism in the NE. He said the issue of relaxation of these artificial constraints to tourism had been taken up with the Ministry of Home Affairs, which, in turn, had asked for the views of the State Governments. He requested State Governments to send their response quickly in order to solve the problems early.

Participating in the discussion, a representative from Indo- Myanmar Chamber of Commerce drew the attention of the Centre to set up immigration counters at Moreh border so that the tourists from Myanmar could enter the region. He informed that patients from Myanmar were interested to come to North East for better treatment now that the Myanmar Government had allowed their citizens to travel to India by road.

Pointing out the importance of tourism in providing job opportunities to the youths, Subhash Goyal, President of Indian Association of Tour Operators firmly said, “ I will guarantee that if tourism industry could be developed in the North East, there will be no terrorism in the region in the next two years”.

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