BJP wants Durbar shift exercise scrapped

The BJP has put the coalition partner, PDP, in a tight spot as the former has demanded “abandoning” of the 145-year-old Durbar move practice.
The Durbar move is the relocation of the capital and secretariat from Jammu to Srinagar and vice-versa every six months.
The demand, made by BJP spokesperson Virender Gupta in statement on Monday, may trigger a new debate as voices demanding that the practice be scrapped have started getting shriller in Jammu, where the government has gone missing after the Durbar offices shifted to Srinagar.
“The practice of the Durbar move should be abandoned as it costs the state exchequer heavily. This practice was adopted in J&K as well as in some of other parts of the country because of the special circumstance prevailing at that time, when the means of communication were limited and the electronic communication was almost negligible. After the advancements in the electronic communication, air journey and better road facilities, this practice was abandoned in the rest of the areas of the country but it still persists in J&K,” Gupta said in a statement.
He said the government remained cut off from the people for six months in the Jammu province and in the Kashmir province due to the Durbar Move. “Taking into consideration the peculiar situation of the Valley, diversity, vastness and difficult terrain of J&K, it is essential to keep the government approachable to the people of all sections and areas,” he said.
The Durbar offices started functioning from the summer capital, Srinagar, on Monday after it shifted from Jammu. The civil secretariat, Raj Bhawan, Jammu and Kashmir High Court and other offices closed in Jammu on April 28 and reopened in Srinagar on Monday.
On May 6, former minister and Dogra Sadar Sabha president Gulchain Singh Charak had disrupted Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s speech, demanding that the Durbar Move practice be truncated.
Harsh Dev Singh, chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Panthers Party, who has been vociferously demanding abandoning of the Durbar move exercise, took on the BJP for making hollow slogans and statements.
“The BJP believes in ‘jhumlas’ (slogans) only. They have stopped the practice of the summer secretariat in Jammu, which was initiated to provide succour to the people. For abandoning the Durbar move exercise, they will have to go for a separate state. If you retain civil secretariat at one place, the hue and cry will come from the other side. It will not have any bigger financial implications on the state exchequer as all the infrastructural requirements for functioning of the Durbar Move offices are already in place in both capitals,” Harsh Dev said.