Tourists entering the Nilgiris and Kodaikanal hill stations will be required to mandatorily obtain the e-pass from Tuesday, May 7, till June 30. The e-pass registration system was launched on Monday morning on the website— https://epass.tnega.org/. Details of the visitors, including their names, type of vehicle, duration and place of stay among others, will have to be shared on the website prior to travel.
The Nilgiris Collector, M. Aruna, assured that there was no limit to the number of visitors to the Nilgiris, and that the e-pass will be auto-generated. “We welcome all visitors to the district and ask only that they register before arrival,” she said during a press conference on Saturday.
The new system of registration for the e-pass has been welcomed by local residents as well as conservationists. They feel that the collation of data during the peak tourist season, from May 7 to June 30, will be the first step towards formulating a more sustainable tourism model. But, a few residents feel that the system needs tweaking to ensure that reliable data is recorded.
Ajay Ludra, a Nilgiris resident, said, “While the ‘purpose of visit’ column in the website asks users to choose between tourism, business, agriculture and others, it did not have a field for residents travelling in vehicles that are not owned by them.”
“In such cases, a resident will have to register as a tourist and fictitiously fill out a date of exit,” said Mr. Ludra, and added that even local residents who have vehicles registered under TN-43, should not be exempt from registering while entering and exiting the hill station.
He also suggested that the system of e-passes must be extended for a year, so that a more accurate dataset can be collected to fix a carrying capacity for both the ghat road leading to the Nilgiris as well as for the district itself.
Senior officials from the Nilgiris district administration said that they have been monitoring whether the website is functional since Monday morning and said that no issues have been reported so far, by any users about an inability to procure an e-pass.
