As the government starts demarcation of land for new infrastructure projects across Jammu and Kashmir, residents are raising concerns about land ownership. Three projects have evoked concerns in the Kashmir Valley, with people fearing their livelihoods will be impacted.
In South Kashmir’s Pulwama, many residents oppose the potential acquisition of 4,834 kanals (600 acres) of prime horticultural land for a new campus of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Srinagar, saying the institute could be constructed on much less land. Residents argue that the orchard land, regarded as one of the last fertile areas for almond cultivation--a key agricultural product in the region, would be adversely impacted if taken over for the project.
On December 24, 2024, the Deputy Commissioner of Pulwama issued an order forming a team of revenue officers to prepare documentation for the land transfer. Locals, who say they have cultivated the land for over a century, accuse the government of disregarding their rights in the decision-making process. Similar concerns surround plans to establish satellite colonies along the Ring Road in Srinagar, while a third contentious project involves the construction of a railway line from Bijbehara to tourist destination Pahalgam in South Kashmir.
People's Democratic Party (PDP) leader and MLA Pulwama, Waheed-ur-Rehman Para, expressed reservations over the acquisition of land for the establishment of a new NIT in Pulwama. Parra says he was not opposing establishment of an NIT, but seizing 5,000 kanals of land is unacceptable. “The worry is why the government insisted on so much land for the NIT when it can be constructed on 500 kanals,” he said.
In his first interaction with the media after taking office early this month, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, when asked about his stance over the land acquisition in Kashmir, said he will ensure that productive agricultural land is not taken away.
The CM said that a delegation from the area had approached him to express their reservations about the establishment of the institution in their area. “If the people of the area are opposed to the project, we will relocate it to a place where it is accepted wholeheartedly,” he said, adding that the government aims to strike a balance between development and the preservation of farmland.
The PDP president and former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti also questioned the Jammu and Kashmir government’s proposals for Ring Road and satellite townships, seeking transparency on the projects’ beneficiaries. Mufti raised concerns over the proposal to construct 30 satellite townships along the Srinagar Ring Road, saying the project would eat up prime agricultural and horticultural land. “This is a land-deficit region and such plans violate the Srinagar Master Plan and the government’s land-use policy,” Mehbooba said.
Two more proposed railway projects, Awantipora-Shopian-Kulgam and Bijbehara-Pahalgam, cutting through vast apple orchards, have also raised concerns among the locals who fear the move would snatch their livelihoods.
In Kashmir, the apple industry is the largest employment generator, providing 400 man-days of work per year per hectare of orchards, employing 3.5 million people, and contributing about 10 per cent to its gross domestic product (GDP). Kashmir's apple story started in the 1950s, soon after the historic land reforms in the 1950s in Jammu and Kashmir. Earlier cultivation of apple was confined to Sopore in North Kashmir, with orchards planted over 12,000 hectares of land by 1952. Over the next decade, the valley would produce around 48,000 MT of apples, which were locally consumed. Since 1962, the horticulture department and the Sher-i-Kashmir University of Agriculture, Science and Technology (SKUAST), turned around the apple economy for the farmers, providing timely advice and introducing high-density apple plants to the Valley. By 2020-21, the area under apple cultivation was 3,35,000 hectares and production was 19.85 lakh MT. Now this vast stretch of apple land in South Kashmir’s Anantnag district is likely to come under the proposed railway project.
Mushtaq Ahmad, 50, a farmer from Dirhama village in Bijbehara, foresees a dark future as he stands to lose his entire apple farm to the project. "I own 18 kanals of orchard land, and this has been our livelihood for more than 40 years," he says. Ahmad, who supports his parents, wife, and four children, said education of his children was solely dependent on the income generated from the crop.
Like Ahmad, other farmers are equally apprehensive about losing their apple farms to the railway project. "I have poured my blood and sweat into this apple orchard to get better returns and provide quality education for my children. But this move has shattered all my dreams," another farmer Ghulam Hassan says. He points out that since officials from the revenue department began demarcating the land, sleepless nights have plagued the village. The planned rail line will extend to the famous tourist destination of Pahalgam, and experts fear it could impact ecologically fragile zones.
