Gulmarg On Lease Leash

This time of the year, when Kashmir was still a state, the snow-covered mountain slopes of Gulmarg used to be bustling with people—tourists from all over the world converging on this picture-postcard destination to enjoy skiing, hiking or just lazing around their hotels, sipping hot cups of Kashmiri pink chai. The Gulmarg story went bust in August last year when the state was bifurcated and its special status revoked. Just a few days before the momentous decision, the government had asked all tourists to leave the state. They haven’t returned since then.

If lack of tourists was killing hoteliers in Gulmarg, they are now looking at an end to their businesses with the government launching a drive to take back “encroached land”—businesses with expired lease on land. The government move comes after a division bench of the J&K High Court, in response to a PIL, directed immediate steps for retrieval of public land under unauthorised occupation and encroachment in Gulmarg.

Hoteliers allege a conspiracy to take away their businesses as the government have not renewed their lease for the past couple of years. The lease of most of the 70-odd big and small hotels in Gul­marg—granted for 30 to 40 years—have expired. Only three hotels have lease for 90 years in the tourist spot, about 50 km from summer capital Srinagar.

“These properties are on lease with us for decades. Now the government is not extending their lease, making running hotels difficult here,” says Mushtaq Chaya, a top hotelier of Kashmir. “We are telling the government that giving lease rights is not something unique to Kashmir and the contract should be extended for hoteliers,” Chaya adds. Hoteliers say the government has sent notices to at least 69 hoteliers mentioning that their lease have ended and they would be operating only as “caretakers”.

Many in Kashmir see the developments in Gulmarg as part of an alleged larger conspiracy to divest locals of their properties and hand them over to people from outside. On October 27, the Centre notified new land laws that allows anyone to purchase land in Jammu and Kashmir. This ended a decades-old government policy of allowing land ownership only to natives of the state.

Small hoteliers, who are already out of business for the past two years, say the latest move will end their only source of livelihood in Gulmarg, considered the crown jewel of the Valley’s tourist landscape. Besides the ski slopes, Gulmarg also has a government-operated cable car, or gondola, that gives tourists breathtaking views.

During normal times, Gulmarg recorded business worth Rs 35-40 crore annually, says Nasir Shah, chairman of the Kashmir Leisure and Pilgri­mage Tour Operators. Rough estimates put the number of tourists to the Valley at over a million annually. And Gulmarg is invariably on the must-go list of the visitors, he adds. Another hotelier of Gul­marg sums up the mood, “We don’t know what the future holds for us. Our trauma is reflective of what Kashmiris have been feeling since August 2019.”

 Besides Gulmarg, hoteliers in Pahal­gam—another popular tourist destination, about 90 km from Srinagar—may also face a similar situation. Pahal­gam hoteliers say their lease have also not been renewed for the past couple of years. Government notices may be on the way to Pahalgam, too.

By Naseer Ganai in Srinagar