Uttarakhand: The Nainital High Court on Thursday lifted the ban on Chardham Yatra and issued guidelines for devotees to pertain to COVID protocols whilst embarking on the Yatra. The court in its notice also mandated negative RT-PCR reports and called for a completely vaccinated certificate from the devotees. The order came from a bench of Chief Justice RS Chauhan and Justice Alok Kumar Verma which was hearing the application forwarded by the state authorities asking the court to permit yatra which was stalled by the court on June 28 citing the rising number of cases in the state, lack of preparations to control the spread, and shortage of doctors. However, in July the state had filed a SIP in the Supreme court.
Directing officials to monitor the crowd, the court issued the attendance limit for the Chardham Yatra. As per the guidelines, only 800 devotees would be allowed at Kedarnath Dham, 1200 at Badrinath Dham, 600 at Gangotri and 40o devotees at Yamunotri Dham in a day.