NDMA carries out mock exercise to asses preparedness of Amarnath pilgrimage

Ahead of the Amarnath pilgrimage, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has conducted mock exercises to asses the preparedness and response mechanism of all the stake-holders to deal with natural as well as man-made disasters, the Home Ministry said today.

The mock exercises were conducted from June 22 and concluded today at critical areas along the Baltal and Pahalgam-Chandanwari routes.

The move has been taken at enhancing the preparedness of the officials of the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB), district administration and other key government agencies to deal with any disaster during the pilgrimage.

Senior officials from all the important departments such as the SASB, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), Rashtriya Rifles, Central Reserve Police Force, Army, police, health, civil defence, transport, fire and other emergency services attended preparatory meetings and participated in the mock exercises.

The NDMA experts trained the participants on key aspects of disaster management such as the formation of incident response teams, coordination among various participating agencies, evacuation, medical preparedness and trauma counselling, a home ministry statement said.

After the drills, post-exercise analyses were carried out by the NDMA experts in which they discussed the entire operation and underlined areas that needed improvement, the statement said.

The two-month-long annual Amarnath pilgrimage to the cave shrine dedicated to Lord Shiva in the Himalayas in Jammu and Kashmir will begin from June 28.

A total of 2.60 lakh pilgrims offered prayers at the shrine last year.

The Amarnath shrine is situated in a narrow gorge at the farther end of Lidder Valley in South Kashmir.