Saqib Bilal, teen who did a cameo in ‘Haider’ turned rebel, shot dead in Mujgund encounter

Saqib Bilal and another boy, a Class 9 student from Hajin Bandipora, were killed along with a Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba militant in an 18-hour gun battle with security forces in Mujgund on the outskirts of Srinagar on December 9. He was a theater artist and had even done a brief role in a Bollywood movie. That was before he disappeared along with another boy in August. Saqib Bilal and another boy, a Class 9 student from Hajin Bandipora, were killed along with a Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba militant in an 18-hour gun battle…

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At -9.5 degrees Gulmarg coldest in Kashmir

Higher reaches of Jammu and Kashmir received fresh snow on Thursday while the plains witnessed intermittent rain as the minimum temperature settled below the freezing point at most places in the Valley and Ladakh region. Snow has been recorded in the higher areas of the Valley like Qazigund, Kokernag, Pahalgam and Mughal Road during the night, MeT officials said. There are reports of snow in other areas in the higher reaches of the Valley and Jammu region as well, including near the Jawahar tunnel on Srinagar-Jammu highway, they said. However,…

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KAS Aspirants up in arms against JKPSC over irregularities in evaluation

Since the results of Kashmir Administrative Services (KAS) were declared on 4 December, almost every day now, hundreds of aspirants’ throng the streets to protest against the alleged “discrepancies” by Jammu and Kashmir Public Service Commission (PSC), the top body for recruitment of administrative officers in Jammu and Kashmir. This is for the first time that such protests have been taking place simultaneously in Jammu and Srinagar, the twin capitals of the state, with the aggrieved accusing the commission of dropping “meritorious candidates” from the list and accommodating some “blue-eyed…

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Despite spending crores govt fails to restore Dal’s lost glory

In less than two decades, the authorities have spent a whopping amount of money on the conservation of the Dal Lake, but the government as well as experts admit that there has been “little or no change” in the lake’s worsening situation. Experts have blamed the outdated conservation plans and the unscientific ways for the failure. Recently, the government, in its report, had informed the High Court that Rs 759 crore had been spent on the conservation of the lake since 2002. The court observed that the “lackadaisical approach on…

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Newly elected councilors press for the extension of 74th amendment to J&K

As heads of all 79 urban local bodies have been appointed after the completion of the poll process, the elected representatives have stepped up efforts to extend the 74th Amendment of the Constitution to J&K to make these bodies functional in the ‘real sense’. “A meeting of the general house of the Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC) will be held on December 15 to intensify the campaign to give adequate powers to the urban local bodies to make them purposeful,” JMC Deputy Mayor Purnima Sharma told Kashmir Post. She said a…

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Politicians, Bureaucrats live better lives than Emperor Jahangir: Satya Paul Malik

Asserting that he does not have political agenda in J&K, Governor Satya Paul Malik Wednesday said powerful people like politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen live better live then Emperor Jahangir in Kashmir. “When I raised voice against corruption, I was blamed for defaming Kashmir in the name of corruption. I am not defaming Kashmir. It is those people who indulge in corruption who defamed Kashmir,” Governor Satya Pal Malik said addressing media. Malik interacted with the media at Jammu’s convention centre to highlight the achievement of his administration during his tenure…

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