By: Sanjib Kumar Roy,Reporter, United News of India

Port Blair, Oct 10. (UNI): The sylvan recluse of the golden beaches
of Andamans faces a scare from milling tourists who have thronged
the archipelago to bathe in its beauty.

Hundreds of tourists come to the call of these islands and this year
has not been an exception, except for the fact that an overflow of
holidayers have left them squabbling for accommodation.

The call of the exotic beaches, lush green mountains and panoramic
view of the emerald waters have left many under the open sky in
parks or in small motels and sometimes on the beaches.

"Number of tourists exceeds the accommodation facilities, at times
we have to accommodate 7 to 8 persons in a single hotel room," a
local tour operator Nageshwar Rao said.

About one lakh tourists visit the islands every year but this year
the figure was a remarkable 60,000 in the initial months.

Earlier, experts had predicted that the tourism sector would take
another ten years to revive after tsunami had spelt huge disaster
here in December 2004.

Amazed with the sky rocketing figures of tourists, the territory's
tourism department secretary G Badjaiyan said, "It seems that rise
in the number of daily flights and introduction of low cost airlines
in these islands has boomed the local tourism industry."

Mr Badjaiyan told UNI here that the tourism sector is looking
forward for infrastructure development to accommodate the growing
number of tourists.

Meanwhile, the local BJP unit has also jumped in against the
inconvenience faced by the tourists. In a press release the party
said the tour operators are dissatisfied with the attitude and
policies of the territory's administration.

"We did not book any tour-operator from Mainland India before
landing in Port Blair and it is surprising that there is no one to
entertain us, local tour operators are overloaded with pre-booked
tourists," a tourist from Kolkata Ranjan Saha said.

"We face a lot of difficulty to get accommodation as the hotels and
lodges are already occupied," Saha added.

Taking advantage of the situation many Auto and Taxi operators have
also jumped into the business to make fast bucks by cheating the
tourists, sources said.

"Several tourists have lodged complaints with us of being cheated by
the tour operators in guise of providing accommodation amount,"
Andaman Superintendent of police Jaspal Singh said.

"We have cautioned unscrupulous elements against fleecing tourists
as legal action can be initiated against them on complaint," he
added.

The Government officials have also expressed their serious concern
over the issue as this could send a wrong signal of mismanagement
thereby affecting the tourism sector.

The Andaman tourism had planned a number of revival strategies after
the disastrous tsunami, however, the spurt in number of tourists
have created a piquant situation here.

But the tourists don't seem to mind, because the never land is more
attractive than the regular humdrum of the West.