A day after over 300 tourists were rescued in a massive operation launched after a technical snag halted the Gulmarg Gondola cable car service, the authorities on Tuesday said the service would remain shut for around a week in view of tourist safety.
Managing Director of the J&K Cable Car Corporation Syed Qamar Sajad told The Tribune that the cable car service would remain closed for around four to seven days.
He also said a committee had been constituted to look into the technical snag that developed on Monday.
Following the snag, tourists trapped in nearly 65 cabins were rescued after an arduous seven-hour operation jointly carried out by the Army, State Disaster Response Force, National Disaster Response Force, the police and other agencies. Senior officials, including Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Chaudhary and J&K Police Chief Nalin Prabhat, rushed to the site to monitor the rescue operation.
Sajad told reporters on Tuesday that the rescue operation, which had been launched on Monday, concluded by the evening and all tourists were brought down safely. “All are safe,” he said.
He said when the cable car developed a technical snag on Monday, the authorities had two options. “The gearbox got damaged and we had two options. Either we had to repair it there, or we had to replace it. We had a spare, but it will take us around 12-24 hours to replace,” he said.
Sajad said the authorities decided to proceed with the vertical rescue operation.
“So the expertise of our rescue team is an example in itself. So they have proved their worth today,” he said.
He said the engineering team would examine the matter and decide whether the gearbox needed to be replaced or whether some other technical issue had caused the halt in operations.
He said once officials were satisfied that the service was “technically fit, feasible and secure and safe for the tourists, we will open it up.”
“So it will take at least 1-2 days to look into the reasons and change of the snag, whether we have to change the machinery or we have to change some spare parts,” he said.
