By IANS
Srinagar : Bad weather and heavy snowfall continued to block the strategic Jammu-Srinagar highway for the third day Thursday.
“Fresh snowfall in the Jawahar Tunnel area Wednesday evening has forced the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) to again suspend their road opening operation. The highway shall remain closed for all forms of vehicular traffic Thursday,” a traffic police officer told IANS.
The continuing blockade of the Jammu-Srinagar highway, which forms the lifeline of supplies for the land locked Kashmir valley, has resulted in the artificial scarcity of essential commodities here.
Although authorities maintain that there are enough stocks of essential supplies to withstand closure of the highway for at least a fortnight, some traders appeared to have withdrawn their stocks on hearing the news of the blockade.
Long queues of locals waiting to get for cooking gas cylinders and kerosene were seen Wednesday throughout the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir.
Taj Mohiuddin, consumer affairs and public distribution system minister, said some people were helping black marketers by indulging in panic buying.
“It has became a practice with many people to start storing kerosene and cooking gas beyond their normal needs when they hear of the highway closure. This results in the black marketers quoting their own prices on commodities,” Mohiuddin told IANS.
The minister added that his department had set up dozens of checking squads to keep a strict vigil on the markets, especially since the Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Azha is only days away on Dec 21.
Reports said nearly 1,000 passengers were stranded at Banihal town while hundreds of trucks and load carriers with supplies were stuck at various points on the highway.
N.P. Bhatnagar, director of the Srinagar meteorological office, said: “The maximum temperature Wednesday was four degrees Celsius and the minimum was 1.2 degrees.
“The narrowing of the range between the maximum and the minimum temperature means more chill. There would be rain and snowfall at many places in Kashmir Thursday.”