It seems that the UP government has once again decided to skip featuring the Taj Mahal in one of their ads promoting tourism within the state.
In an advertisement released on September 27th 2020, the World Tourism Day, the Uttar Pradesh Tourism Department (UPTD) had published an ad in Hindi and English newspapers.
The ad was a creation of the state’s name using a variety of different images of famous tourist spots in the city.
However, strangely, the UNESCO World Heritage site, Taj Mahal, was missing from within this group even though it could have been used for either of the ‘T’s in Uttar Pradesh.
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Interestingly though this is not the first time that one of the 7 wonders of the world is missing from such tourism adverts done by the state government.
In 2017 also, a 32-page tourism booklet titled ‘Uttar Pradesh Paryatan – Apaar Sambhavnayen’, or “Uttar Pradesh Tourism: Its High Potential” did not feature the monument.
Although the booklet featured various sites from the Hindu, Buddhist and other religions, Taj Mahal was missing from all of it.
Considering the number of tourists that the Taj Mahal attracts, almost 6 million or above each year, it is a big source of revenue for the state.
As per an infographic published by CNBC-TV18, Taj Mahal brought in tourism of over 70 lakh that generated a revenue of over Rs. 86 crores during 2018-19. In the year 2017-18, around 65.7 lakh tourists to the monument brought revenue of Rs. 58.8 crores.
This was also the first time that the Taj Mahal was so publicly omitted from any official tourism ads, but would not be the only time.
At that time, many people had called out the tourism department and UP government for this move as they felt that there was an erasure of history being done.
Even recently, UP CM Yogi Adityanath was in news for changing the upcoming “Mughal Museum” in Agra to the “Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum”.
CM Adityanath, as per reports, had questioned, “How can our heroes be Mughals?” and also explained that “the very name of Shivaji will invoke a feeling of nationalism and self-esteem”.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: India Today, The Indian Express, Wikipedia
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This post is tagged under: taj mahal, taj mahal up govt, taj mahal up tourism, up tourism ad, uttar pradesh, uttar pradesh tourism department, uttar pradesh tourism ad, up taj mahal, taj mahal up govt ignore
