Jammu and Kashmir authorities suspended the ongoing Amarnath Yatra on both the Pahalgam and Baltal routes on Sunday, July 19, after the India Meteorological Department flagged a fresh spell of heavy rainfall across the Union Territory, halting fresh movement of pilgrims on both mountain approaches.
A precaution against the weather
Officials described the suspension as a precautionary step taken purely because of the rain forecast, not because of any single incident. With thousands of devotees moving through narrow mountain roads towards the Amarnath cave shrine every day, the administration chose to pause movement on both approach routes, Pahalgam in south Kashmir and Baltal in central Kashmir, until conditions improve enough to resume safe passage for pilgrims. The move came even as the two routes were already under close watch following a string of highway accidents this yatra season.
A crash near Udhampur a day earlier
The weather related halt came a day after a road accident left at least four Amarnath pilgrims injured on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway in Udhampur early on Saturday morning. A Toyota Innova carrying pilgrims towards the Baltal base camp rammed into a dumper truck that was parked along the roadside at Sangoor Chowk, colliding into it from behind. Police personnel reached the spot soon after the collision, rescued the injured pilgrims and shifted them to the Associated Hospital attached to the Government Medical College in Udhampur for treatment. A case has been registered and police have opened an investigation to establish exactly how the crash happened; further details on the probe are still awaited.
Eighteen hurt in an earlier pile up near Ramban
This was not the only accident to hit the yatra in recent days. On Monday, July 13, two buses belonging to the Jammu and Kashmir Road Transport Corporation and a car ferrying pilgrims for the Amarnath Yatra collided near the Chanderkote Langar Point on the same Jammu-Srinagar National Highway, this time in Ramban district, leaving 18 pilgrims injured. A joint rescue effort involving the Civil Administration, the Central Reserve Police Force, the Army and Jammu and Kashmir Police was mounted at the site, and all the injured were subsequently moved to the district hospital for treatment.
A 57 day pilgrimage now on a weather pause
The Amarnath Yatra, which runs for 57 days in total, started on July 3 and is scheduled to conclude on August 28, coinciding with Raksha Bandhan. The Sunday suspension does not cancel the yatra outright; it pauses fresh movement on the two routes until the weather clears enough for the administration to consider it safe to let pilgrims proceed again. The Vaishno Devi Yatra has separately also been suspended temporarily because of an inclement weather advisory, pointing to a wider spell of unsettled weather across the region this week.
