Moon-lit Taj brings little cheer to Agra

When the Supreme Court decided to allow the night opening of the Taj Mahal on five moonlit nights every month, the Agra tourism industry was ecstatic but barely six months after the Taj reopened for tourists, this has dampened somewhat.

The tall estimates of hundreds of crores from increased tourist traffic are nowhere to be seen and with the summers at full swing, almost 80 per cent of the 20,000 rooms in the star category, middle & budget class hotels of Agra are running empty.

A town devoid of major industries, tourism serves as the staple business for Agra, generating revenue of over 1000 crores per year only on the attraction presented by the Taj Mahal. But this business only booms in the winter months with the tourist traffic dwindling away in the summer.

At this time, night viewing of the Taj Mahal could have opened newer avenues for the town's tourism industry but with only about 40-45 tourists visiting the Taj during night on an average instead of the stipulated 400 due to the restricted view of the monument presented to them from a distance of about 300 meters, there has not been any significant increase in the tourism business and the local tourism industry has now begun demanding that the viewing platform be moved closer to Taj Mahal by at least 150 meters so that the monument is more clearly visible to the tourists under the dull light of the moon.

The trade organisations are also demanding that the restrictions placed on the movement of tourists between the main entrance of the monument to the Central tank of the Taj be lifted so that the tourists may get the freedom to experience a more "romantic" side of the monument as they did before the Taj was closed during nights following terrorist threats in 1984.

Talking to Business Standard, Rama Shanker Sharma, founder, Agra Foreign Tourist Traders & Exporters Association said that before the Taj was closed for nights in 1984, the entry in the monument was not restricted to just the five moonlit nights, but it continued throughout the month and the tourists could move about freely in the monument, even reaching the main dome and though the Taj's entry was virtually free in those times, the huge tourist traffic that came to Agra attracted by this moonlit monument made this city thrive as a tourist destination.

But now, while the tourists are being asked to view the monument from a distance of 300 meters, they are also not allowed to move freely in the Taj premises, always guarded by dozens of security personnel, taking away the intimate side of this monument of love.

This fact is hampering the influx of tourists to view the Taj by night and as a result, while the local hotels are running virtually empty, a number of the local travel agencies have temporarily relocated themselves to other towns like Jaipur in search of business.