Shekhawat to visit J-K on June 18-19 to meet CM Omar Sources

     New Delhi, Jun 17 (PTI) Union Tourism Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat will pay a two-day official visit to Jammu and Kashmir beginning Wednesday, during which he is scheduled to meet Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, official sources said.
     Shekhawat is also scheduled to visit many ancient temples located in the Union Territory such as Kheer Bhawani Temple, Martand Surya Temple, as well as Pahalgam and Betaab Valley in Anantnag district, they said.
     His official visit comes nearly two months after the Pahalgam terror attack on April 22.
     A day after the terror attack, Shekhawat had said that he and his office were in "continuous touch" with the chief secretary and the tourism secretary of the UT and keeping an eye on the situation.
     He had asserted that his ministry would do the best to "minimise the dent" on tourism in J-K in the wake of the Pahalgam attack.
     Some people with nefarious intentions tried to again "incite separatism and terrorism" in the Valley, the tourism minister had said.
     Sources in his office said, earlier in the day, Shekhawat, was in Jodhpur, and was supposed to reach Delhi in a commercial flight by afternoon.
     However, the flight was first diverted towards Jaipur, but the plane did not land there, and it was then diverted to Bhopal where it landed, they said.
     The Union minister reached Delhi late night and took a metro to travel home.
     While the cause of diversion of the flight he was travelling is not immediately known, 14 flights were diverted at the Delhi airport on Tuesday evening due to adverse weather conditions, according to an official.
     Six flights were diverted to Bhopal, three to Chandigarh, two to Amritsar, one each to Ahmedabad, Varanasi and Lucknow, the official said.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)