Shillong, June 13 (UNI) The murder of Raja Raghuvanshi has not impacted the tourist footfall in Sohra, one of the popular tourist destination in Meghalaya, State Tourism Minister Paul Lyngdoh said on Friday.

“The footfall of tourist in Sohra is increasing. Even when the murder case is being investigated tourist continues to visit Sohra,” Lyngdoh said.

He said the tourist footfall is expected to touch 20 lakh after the upcoming Cherry Blossom festival to be held later this year.

There were raising concerns that the recent murder of Raja, a tourist from Madhya Pradesh’s Indore, could negatively impact tourists visiting a state.

Lyngdoh said the genesis of the government's demand for apology sprang after a number of wild comments were made including incitement of violence against people originating from Meghalaya following the tragic incident at Sohra.

“The very next day the response was tremendous because a lot of major media houses including Times of India, Republic TV apart from private blockers have tendered their unqualified apology. So that met with our demand," he stated.

Stating that the matter has ended, Lyngdoh said, "We have stated very clearly that unless you apologize we will file defamation suits and we have filed FIRs as well. Now once they have taken their words back for instance the family of the deceased has also publicly apologized to the government and people of Meghalaya, the matter ends there."

The tourism minister informed that the state already has a tourism app, which records all movement of tourists, including the cars or whatever mode of transport they used and compulsory registration of all visitors at various homestays, resorts and hotels.

“Now, the use of this app is roughly around 50% but we will now make it compulsory that all homestays, resorts, and other places of acommodation should register all visitors mandatorily," he added.

The tourism department has already issued a notice calling for interested youth who are fluent in Khasi, Garo, English and Hindi to join the tourist buddy scheme and within the next two months, we should be able to clear appointment of hundreds of tourist buddies, the minister informed.

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