Tourists visiting this picturesque hill station are at the receiving end as curfew remains in force in the entire city and parts of it are virtually under siege due to continuing clashes between two groups since Thursday.
A number of hotels in Shillong told PTI that there were anxious queries from tourists and last minute cancellations of rooms due to fear of a breakdown of the law-and-order situation.Violence broke out on Thursday after local tribals and Punjabi residents clashed in the city’s Punjabi line area after a bus handyman was allegedly beaten up by a group of people.
The Army conducted a flag march on Monday and is scheduled to conduct another again at 10 pm. “We have received a lot of queries from guests on the current situation in the State capital. There have been cancellations of advanced bookings at our hotels in the last 72 hours,” a manager at Hotel Centre Point told PTI. She said the hotel had witnessed record reservations and bookings over the past few years during the summer break and hoped that the situation returned to normalcy soon. A guesthouse operator at Sohra (erstwhile Cherrapunji) said if the situation in Shillong did not improve soon, the money he had invested in the guesthouse would not give him any returns.