The road to Begumbagh passes through hauntingly silent villages. The houses and shuttered shops looked abandoned and fewer people walked the potholed road on Saturday, the third day of a shutdown to mourn the killing of two militants and a teenaged civilian. An overwhelming eeriness competed with a cloudy grey sky. Begumbagh is a quiet village in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district, the new heartland of Kashmir’s ageing conflict and home to a dangerous trend of civilians trying to storm the cordoned-off sites to rescue militants. It was here in this…
Read MoreYear: 2017
City drenched in festive colours
Holi, the festival of colours, was celebrated across J&Kwith traditional fervour and gaiety today. In Jammu, people celebrated the festival by splashing colours on their family members and friends. Educational institutions had already celebrated the festival on Saturday by organising cultural events. In schools, students were seen dancing to the drum beats. The public transport was mostly off the roads as people were celebrating the festival. However, groups of youths, in celebratory mode, hit the streets in cars, open jeeps and motorcycles. Reports said that Holi was celebrated with religious…
Read MoreTravel Marts, Road shows fail to woo tourists
Despite Jammu and Kashmir Tourism department organizing ten road shows in different states during the past few months, the number of tourists visiting Kashmir has not picked up till date. Stakeholders and the officials of the Tourism department claim that the aftershocks of five-month long 2016 summer unrest are still being felt and these have brought down the tourist influx to zero. As per Tourism officials and stakeholders, the Tourism department along with local stakeholders organized road shows and participated in travel marts at Lucknow, Kochi, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Indore, Ahmedabad,…
Read MoreFresh landslides triggered closure of Srinagar-Jammu National Highway for 6th consecutive day
The nearly 300-km-long Srinagar-Jammu National Highway (NH) was again closed on Monday with fresh landslides occurring at a few places along the road, a day after it was reopened to traffic. The only all-weather road connecting the Valley to the rest of India, the highway was opened on Sunday for one-way traffic after remaining closed for four days. “The National Highway was once again closed for traffic as fresh landslides occurred at a few places along the highway,” a Traffic Department official said here. A portion of the road in…
Read MoreNational Highway remains cut off for 4th consecutive day
The Kashmir valley remained cut off from the rest of the world for the fourth day Friday due to closure of the 300-km-long Kashmir highway due to landslides and fresh snowfall. Closure of the highway has resulted in shortage of essentials, particularly fresh vegetables while the prices of other items, including chicken, has witnessed sharp increase in the Valley. Meanwhile, hundreds of vehicles, including trucks and oil tankers, remained stranded at different places on the highway, including Qazigund on this side of the Jawahar tunnel and Batote, Kud, Nagrota and…
Read More800 Minors lodged in Kashmir’s juvenile home in last 6 Years
At least 800 minors were lodged in Kashmir’s lone Juvenile Home here in the past six years, officials said on Friday. Director of J&K’s Social Welfare Department, Hashmat Ali, admitted that ever since the Juvenile Home was set-up in 2011, at least 800 minor offenders including ‘those in conflict with law’ (stone-pelters) were lodged there. “The irony in Kashmir is that we keep a very pessimistic view of everything and that’s a tragedy. The Juvenile Home in Harwan was ranked one among best in India by a team of experts…
Read MoreTassaduq Mufti, Mehbooba Mufti’s brother may contest from Anantnag
With the election process for the Srinagar and Anantnag parliamentary seats in Kashmir beginning next week, major political parties are in the process of finalising their contestants for the byelections, being held less than three years after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the opposition National Conference and the Congress will come out with the list of contesting candidates by early next week before the notification for the first phase (Srinagar) is issued on March 14 and for the second phase (Anantnag) on March…
Read MoreHizbul’s twitter handler posts pro-India tweets, blasts Kashmir separatist leaders
The Twitter handle of banned militant organisation Hizbul Mujahideen began posting pro-India tweets that denounced Kashmir’s separatist leadership on Friday morning, astounding many across the Valley. While this development led observers to believe that hackers had taken control of the militant organisation’s handle, the Hizbul leadership has not issued any clarification in this regard. The tweets under contention were critical of several important resistance leaders, including Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front head Yasin Malik and Hurriyat Conference chairperson Syed Ali Shah Geelani. “Syed Ali Shah Geelani is a puppet of…
Read MoreSpring Snow freezes Valley, Highwayshut for third day
Intermittent snowfall across the Kashmir valley today brought back wintry cold conditions to the region and the Srinagar-Jammu highway remained closed for the third consecutive day. The snowfall was recorded in most parts of the Valley and continued intermittently since Thursday evening. Srinagar city, the state’s summer capital, was also covered by a thin blanket of snow today. It was a rare snowfall which took place as the region is in the midst of early spring and harsh winter has already ended. Moderate to heavy rainfall was also recorded at…
Read More16 PDP, BJP leaders appointed vice-chiefs of loss-making PSEs
Despite financial crunch in state, each politician to get Rs1.5 lakh per month Contrary to its claims of taking austerity measures to reduce the burden on the state exchequer, the government today appointed 16 politicians of the PDP and the BJP as vice-chairpersons of the financially overburdened public sector enterprises (PSEs). These politicians are entitled to a monthly salary of Rs 80,000 per month, besides hefty perks and allowances to “serve” the PSEs which are already facing huge losses for the past many years. A senior officer in the General…
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