Hoteliers in Kashmir’s tourist hotspot of Gulmarg have withdrawn petitions challenging the evictions and fresh auction of around 52 structures, including 32 hotels and 20 huts, spread over 38 acres.
Senior lawyer Zaffar Shah pleaded before the J&K High Court to allow withdrawal of a battery of petitions. A bench, comprising Chief Justice Arun Palli and Justice Rajnesh Oswal, has allowed the withdrawal, a hotelier told The Hindu on the condition of anonymity. The petitioners, the court observed, intended “to approach the J&K government with representations to settle the dispute”.
Official sources said the J&K government, unlike the Lieutenant Governor administration, intended to form a committee to look into the lease issues and auctions. The L-G administration, contrary to the government’s position, advocated auctioning of lease properties and denying the current occupants any chance to sit in the fresh bid.
Senior Additional Advocate General (AAG) Mohsin Qadri, who represented the L-G office in the court, has extended the support to “fair, reasonable and equitable solution”.
This has ended a long legal battle of the local hoteliers in Kashmir who challenged fresh rules framed by the L-G administration under J&K Land Grant Rules in 2022, which replaced the J&K Land Grants Rules-1960. The new rules would have ended all the current leases and disallowed the occupants from applying the in fresh auction. It even proposed to reduce the lease period from 99 years to 40 years. The previous bar on the outsiders to apply for lease of land was also removed in the new rules, which many local hoteliers saw as “an attempt to replace local owners with bigwig outsiders”.
