'Darbar move' begins in Jammu, Secretariat to open in Srinagar in May

The annual 'Durbar Move' under which the Jammu and Kashmir government moves to the summer capital of Srinagar for six months has commenced in the state.

All the move offices including the civil secretariat and the Raj Bhavan closed in Jammu on Saturday and is set to reopen in Srinagar on May 6 or May 7, according to officials.

The 'darbar move' of shifting of the capital every six months is a unique feature of Jammu and Kashmir and a practice that has been in vogue since the time of the Maharajahs.

Charanjeet, a local resident said that the move has been in place since the time the state was ruled by Maharajahs.

The specific practice is said to have begun in the year 1872 by Maharajah Gulab Singh and formally initiated by his son Maharaja Ranbir Singh who took the Durbar (Royal Court) to Kashmir for the six months of summer in 1883 in order to escape the sweltering heat of Jammu. The practice has continued even after Independence.

Voluminous government records and employees of the move offices are carried by the J-K state Road Transport Corporation buses and trucks who would be allowed to ply on Jammu-Srinagar national highway alongside the security convoy on Sunday, officials said.

"All the important files and other material which has to be taken to Kashmir have been packed and are being loaded in trucks which will be taken to Secretariat in Srinagar. More than 500 laboured are hired to load and unload the material," they said.

The state government spends crores of rupees to shift records and also give allowance for the several thousand employees who shift base with the government, says Charanjeet a local resident.

Some people feel it is good practice as both the regions- Jammu and the Kashmir Valley require Government at their locations to ensure work is done. However, others feel that a lot of money is being spent on the Darbar move and new alternative should be adopted.

Vijay Sahani, another resident says, "This is an era of modernisation and I think that the move can now be done away if records are computerised and digitised the government can save a lot of money. Also when the secretariat is shifted to Srinagar the people in Jammu face problems and when it is in Jammu then those in Kashmir Vally face a problem."

"Moreover during the process of shifting, the secretariat is shut for a month. It will reopen now on May 6 or 7. Also in October the secretariat shuts in October in Srinagar and reopens in November in Jammu. There is a whole month lost in this" Sahani says.