Govt to focus on heritage sites to boost tourism

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday promised to clean up the core of Varanasi — the Lok Sabha constituency of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The “Varanasi Temple Town” will be incorporated in a list of India's heritage sites, which will receive special attention from the Centre. Jaitley also announced extending visa-on-arrival (VOA) facility to 150 countries, apparently seeking to attract more foreign tourists.

The government has so far extended the facility to 43 countries, which has resulted in a significant increase in foreign tourist arrival, contributing to the nation’s foreign exchange earnings. “India has 25 cultural World Heritage Sites.

These facilities are still deficient and require restoration, including landscape restoration, signage and interpretation centres; parking, access for the differently-abled, visitors’ amenities including security and toilets, illumination, and plans for benefiting communities around them,” said Jaitley while presenting the Budget in the Lok Sabha. 

He announced providing “resources” for development of nine heritage sites—Churches & Convents of Old Goa,  Hampi (Karnataka), Elephanta Caves (Mumbai), Kumbalgarh and other Hill Forts (Rajasthan), Rani ki Vav in Patan (Gujarat), Leh Palace (Ladakh), Jallianwala bagh in Amritsar (Punjab) and Qutub Shahi Tombs in Hyderabad (Telangana), besides the temple town of Varanasi.

Tourism and Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma welcomed the Budget, describing it as “balanced, far-sighted and growth-oriented”. He said the announcement to extend VOA facility to 150 countries was a “big step” in promoting tourism.

“This, combined with the latest introduction of Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA), will help achieve very soon the target of increasing the country’s share in international tourism to more than 1 per cent. The VOA facility, enabled by ETA, has already shown remarkable results,” said the minister.  The country witnessed a total of 25,023 foreign tourist arrivals this January, as compared to 1,903 in January 2014—a growth of 1,214.9 per cent.

“This is due to the introduction of ETA-enabled VOA for 43 countries. The growth of tourism is important for the overall growth of India's economy. The revenue from the tourism sector can be utilised for the development of the country. Tourism in India is a very important source of foreign exchange earnings, and has high labour intensity,” the minister said.