DARBAR MOVE HALT
After about 150 years, there would be no Darbar Move from Jammu to Srinagar for the first time due to COVID-19 virus threat. Whatever the real motive behind this order of administration, it is a decision having far reaching consequences.
Started in 1872 by then Maharaja Ranbir Singh, a Dogra king, who made Jammu and Srinagar twin capitals of Jammu and Kashmir. When elected governments started functioning in Jammu and Kashmir they found the expenditure on the Darbar Move very heavy and wanted to do away with it.
Even Late Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah could not break this tradition. In 1987, then Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah who wanted to do some changes decided to make Srinagar permanent capital of Jammu and Kashmir and issued an order that civil secretariat will function only from Srinagar for all the twelve months of the year.
It created an uproar in Jammu region as Dogras and other Pro-Jammu parties, described this move of National Conference as anti-Jammu and started a massive operation. Farooq Abdullah could not with stand the pressure of Jammu protests and was forced to rescind the order within a month.
Since abrogation of article 370, people of Jammu are not happy that they have been kept in Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir as like the people of Ladakh they always have this impression that Kashmiris have dominated them in the past seventy years.
Though administration in its order has said that they have only suspended the Darbar Move till June 2020, after the assessment of COVID-19 threat they will take a final call on this issue.
