148 years on, J&K bids adieu to Darbar move
The order said that employees shall work on an ‘as is where is’ basis.
In an extraordinary decision, the Jammu and Kashmir administration on Friday decided to halt the annual Darbar Move as the order said that employees shall work on “as is where is” basis. This means when Darbar will open in Srinagar on 4 May 2020 and only Kashmir-based employees will come back to erstwhile summer capital.
Though government used to incur huge loses to the state exchequer by having two capitals in Jammu and Srinagar for running the administration in winter and summer months, due to Jammu protests, no Chief Minister could say goodbye to this practice of Darbar Move which is about 148 years old. This practice of Darbar Move was started in 1872, by then Maharaja Ranbir Singh, a Dogra ruler from Jammu, who used to take the secretariat to Jammu for six months of winter and used to move the Darbar to Srinagar for the summer months.
Though the general administration department has given the reason of Covid-19 pandemic to halt this Darbar Move exercise, this move was in the mind of the UT administration since the abrogation of Article 370 in August last year.
GAD order has said that Kashmir-based employees shall work from Srinagar and Jammu employees from Jammu; the order further said that Move offices outside the civil secretariat shall also continue to remain functional both in Jammu and Srinagar. Keeping the suspense alive, the GAD order has concluded, “The above arrangement shall be reviewed after assessing the extent and spread of Covid-19 after 15 June 2020.”
Former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has reacted sharply to the decision of the UT administration on its decision regarding Darbar Move. Abdullah, in a series of tweets, said “This order regarding the bi-annual Darbar Move is just mindless rubbish at worst & needless tokenism at best. So the offices can’t shift to Srinagar because of #Covid_19, I get that. What I don’t get is what Srinagar secretariat will do without files or senior officers?” In another tweet, Abdullah said: “Most of the Kashmirbased employees are in Jammu since the secretariat was functioning in Jammu over the winter; so who will operate out of the Srinagar secretariat? If Srinagar Secretariat has no employees, no officers & no files what is it being opened for?
“This order of two ‘functioning secretariats’ will just create confusion because no one will know which secretariat to approach to get their work done. It would be better to withdraw this order and just delay the move of offices till the #Covid_19 threat has passed.”
It is in place to mention that former Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah in 1987-88 tried to stop the Darbar Move and even issued a government order to keep the secretariat open in Srinagar for all the 12 months of the year. Farooq Abdullah and National Conference regarded this practice of Darbar Move as Jammu “appeasement” and wanted to do away with it. It triggered huge agitation in the Jammu region in which the Jammu Bar Association, civil society and political leaders of Jammu participated, forcing the then Farooq Abdullah government to rescind the order within a month. Farooq Abdullah was the only elected Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir who dared to alter this age-old practice in Jammu and Kashmir.