Govt gears up for Sammakka Jatara

Hyderabad: Culture & Tourism and Tribal Welfare Minister Azmeera Chandulal said the State government would spend Rs 80 crore for the Sammakka and Saralamma Jatara (Medaram Jatara) scheduled to take place from January 31 to February 3, 2018.

Speaking to the media after meeting Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao at Pragati Bhavan, here on Tuesday, Chandulal said the Chief Minister had given his nod for the release of funds. He said steps had already been taken to make the Jatara a success, for which extensive arrangements would be made.

The Minister said the festival reflected the rich culture and traditions of the tribl people and arrangements were being made, anticipating about one crore pilgrims.

The pilgrims are expected to come from different districts of Telangana and from the neighbouring States of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

He said steps had also been taken to ensure that all the departments involved in making arrangements to the Jatara would work in coordination with each other so that there would be no inconvenience to the pilgrims.

Fire, Health and Police departments will make arrangements to address any emergency situation. The main focus is to ensure that the festival will be incident free.

Apart from these, the Tourism Department is taking steps to attract foreign tourists to the Medaram Jatara. For this, extensive publicity campaign had been taken up in different countries, he said.

To ensure early completion of all the developmental works for the festival, directions have been given to the departments concerned to complete the works by January 15, he said. Chandulal said the Chief Minister had assured to announce the organising committee of Jatara soon.