Jammu and Kashmir Urban Development Minister Rigzin Jora credits Bollywood filmmakers for boosting tourism in the state.
Jora, who is a movie buff, loved Vishal Bharadwaj's "Omkara", "Maqbool", Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra's "Rang De Basanti" and actress-filmmaker Aparna Sen's "36 Chowringhee Lane".
"Films like '3 Idiots' promote tourism. Even in 'Bhaag Milkha Bhaag', the training part was shot here. We are thankful to Bollywood for giving a boost to Ladakh. The buzz about Ladakh is rising and we hope more and more filmmakers come here to shoot," Jora said at the opening ceremony of second edition of Ladakh International Film Festival here.
He hopes the three day festival will be world class with some great movies being screened.
Congratulating the organizers for the second edition of Ladakh Film festival, the urban development minister assured that the government is making every effort to promote tourism in Ladakh.
"The festival will help showcase Ladakh internationally and attract more tourists to this beautiful place. Tourism is the only source of income for us here now, earlier it was Army, they were the biggest employer. We are happy tourism is growing. It is not easy organizing things here due to constraints of distance and logistics."
Jora also insisted that preservation of ecology and natural beauty of this area was a responsibility of all, adding, "people here have to constantly fight with nature and politicians fight with the state and Delhi government for funds and other help."
He expressed a little displeasure over the media coverage of Chinese incursion as it brought down tourism.
"Even the Uttarakhand tragedy happened. I think this year was a dampener for us," he added.
Chief Executive Commissioner Leh, Rigzin Spalbar said, he was quite surprised when the organizers came up with the idea of this festival.
"We did not have the required infrastructure for it but with the help from Army we managed to come up with this auditorium (Sindhu Sanskriti Kala Kendra) otherwise this place would have been khandar. We felt it was a golden opportunity and grabbed it.
