The world famous Jaisalmer Desert Festival will not have the world’s only camel mounted band of BSF. The BSF Rajasthan frontier headquarters for transporting camels and band instruments for use in the festival demanded Rs 10 lakh in the BSF welfare fund for taking part in the festival but the district administration and the tourism department have expressed their inability to shell such a huge amount. The BSF then refused to provide camels and band for the desert festival.
After the camels took part in the Republic Day parade at Raj Path in Delhi, they were sent to be sent to Jaisalmer to take part in the desert festival and start preparation for the BSF aerobic show, camel tattoo show and the mounted band. Though the BSF’s camels made the festival famous the and state’s tourism business gets a boost, the force never takes any kind of money from the tourism department.
But this time, the BSF Rajasthan Frontier has demanded Rs 10 lakh for the BSF welfare fund for taking part the festival which is scheduled between February 12 and 14 and BSF frontier IG PC Meena has confirmed it. Meena said apart from transporting camels, there are heavy expenses on fodder among others and heavy amounts are spent on repairing and purchasing new instruments for the camel mounted band. Hence, the tourism department and the district administration have been asked to compensate these expenses by giving Rs 10 lakh to BSF welfare fund, the IG said.
Meena said a huge budget is allotted to the tourism department for the desert festival and apart from this, the department also gets money from sponsored programmes.
District collector N L Meena while expressing the possibility of BSF camels missing from the desert festival this time, said the tourism department has been allotted a total budget of Rs 13 lakh – Rs 14 lakh for the festival and this amount is spent on artists, lights, music, tent etc and in a such situation giving such huge a amount to BSF is not possible. Talks are going on with the state government have been apprised about the demand from BSF, the collector added.
Jaisalmer tourism department deputy director Vikas Pandya expressing inability to give the amount to BSF from the government allotted fund said it would be very difficult and in Jaisalmer there is no big tourist industry which could sponsor this amount.
src: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2014-01-31/jaipur/46869116_1_desert-festival-bsf-camel-10-lakh