The ruling National Conference’s move to introduce the J&K Land Grants (Restoration and Protection) Bill 2025 is not merely a “pro poor” initiative; it increasingly appears to be a calculated attempt to create a legislative safe harbour for the Union Territory’s entrenched commercial leaseholders, particularly the powerful hospitality lobby in Gulmarg and Pahalgam, whose legal battle has just quietly collapsed at a decisive moment.
The timing is not incidental. It is central.
On March 5, 2026, the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh disposed of a massive batch of writ petitions filed by prominent hoteliers challenging the J&K Land Grant Rules 2022. For nearly four years, these petitioners, represented by senior counsel Zaffar Ahmad Shah, had contested the new regime that mandated auctioning of expired leases and ended the culture of automatic renewals. The matter had reached a stage where a verdict was widely understood to be imminent.
And then, suddenly, the petitioners chose to withdraw. Not on merits. Not after adjudication. But to pursue an administrative resolution.
The government, represented by Senior AAG Mohsin Qadri, did not resist. Instead, it recorded before the Court its willingness to explore a fair, reasonable and equitable solution. The Court, accordingly, disposed of the petitions.
This sequence, judicial closure without adjudication followed by near immediate political intervention, forms the spine of the present controversy. Because barely thirteen days later, on March 18, 2026, NC legislator and chief spokesperson Tanvir Sadiq announced that he would introduce a bill to restore land rights of the poor.
By any analytical standard, the proximity between these events is too precise to be dismissed as coincidence.
To understand what is at stake, one must return to the Jammu and Kashmir Land Grants Rules 2022, notified on December 9, 2022, rules that fundamentally altered the land economy of the UT. These rules were not incremental. They were structural.
They dismantled a decades old system of discretionary leases, many of which had effectively become hereditary or perpetual, and replaced it with a transparent, time bound, market linked regime. The language of the rules leaves little room for interpretative ambiguity.
They define a lease strictly as a temporary arrangement, an agreement between the lessor and the lessee for a specified period. They mandate that allocation of land must move away from patronage and toward a system of forward auction, opening access to competitive bidding.
Most significantly, the rules strike at the heart of legacy control. All outgoing lessees are required to hand over possession of land on expiry of lease, failing which eviction provisions apply. The land reverts to the government free from encumbrances and expired leases are not renewed but stand determined.
These provisions were not administrative housekeeping. They marked a decisive break from what officials themselves described as a leasehold elite economy.
Tanvir Sadiq’s framing of the Bill rests on a moral claim that the 2022 rules dispossessed the poor. But the architecture of the rules and their actual implementation tell a different story.
The 2022 framework explicitly insulated subsisting residential leases, meaning that ordinary households occupying small parcels of land were not the primary targets of eviction. The real impact fell on commercial leaseholders.
In Gulmarg alone, fifty five out of fifty nine hotel leases expired. Across Pahalgam and Srinagar, several high value properties faced non renewal of leases, eviction notices, or transition into auction based reallocation.
These were not marginal occupants. These were prime commercial establishments occupying high value public land at legacy rates.
No case illustrates this tension more sharply than the Nedous Hotel controversy. Established in 1888, the property became a flashpoint when authorities moved to take possession in August 2025.
The grounds cited were stark. The lease had expired in 1985. The original allotment was approximately two kanals. The actual occupation had expanded to nearly ninety eight kanals, raising allegations of massive encroachment.
The case quickly transcended administrative action and entered the realm of political symbolism, not least because of the historical association of the Nedou family with the Abdullah political lineage.
In such a context, the phrase restoring rights acquires a very different meaning. Is the restoration aimed at informal settlers on ten marlas of land, or at commercial entities holding dozens of kanals in prime tourist zones.
The March 5 proceedings effectively reinforced the legal validity of the 2022 regime by allowing its challenge to dissolve without relief. In practical terms, the state’s authority to resume land stood intact, leaseholders lost their principal legal challenge, and the path to auction based redistribution remained open.
This was a decisive moment. And it is precisely after this moment that the political system activates. The shift is telling. From courtroom litigation to legislative intervention.
At face value, the proposed Land Grant (Restoration and Protection) Bill 2025 speaks the language of welfare. It echoes concerns raised by PDP legislator Waheed Parra regarding demolition drives, insecurity of tenure for long term occupants, and lack of ownership rights for economically weaker sections.
But the structure of any such bill determines its beneficiaries, not its rhetoric. Because the 2022 rules operate on a uniform logic. Leases are time bound. Renewals are not automatic. Land returns to the state. Reallocation happens through open competition.
To reverse this even partially would require dilution of auction provisions, softening of eviction mandates, and reopening the question of renewability. Once that door is opened, it does not distinguish between a family occupying ten marlas and a hotel occupying fifty kanals.
This is where the National Conference’s position becomes difficult to reconcile. When Waheed Parra introduced his own bill seeking regularisation of small landholdings, it was rejected on the grounds that it would benefit land grabbers.
Today, the same political establishment proposes a broader intervention, one that by design risks benefiting precisely those with the largest and most valuable land holdings. The contradiction is not rhetorical. It is structural.
What the withdrawal of petitions and introduction of legislation together suggest is a calibrated shift in battleground. In court, the issue was legality. In the Assembly, it becomes policy.
And policy, unlike law, is shaped by political majorities. The movement from one arena to the other is not accidental. It is strategic.
The 2022 regime is not merely a set of rules. It is an entire administrative ecosystem comprising digitised land records, geo referenced mapping, auction platforms and compliance monitoring systems.
Reversing it would not simply restore the past. It would disrupt an already operational framework and create uncertainty for new entrants who participated under the post 2022 system.
At its core, this debate is not about whether the poor deserve land security. They unquestionably do. The real question is narrower, sharper and far more consequential.
Is this bill designed to protect the vulnerable, or structured broadly enough to protect the powerful. Because if it is the latter, then the language of pro poor reform becomes not a description, but a cover.
The National Conference’s Land Grant (Restoration and Protection) Bill 2025 arrives at a moment where the judiciary has stepped back, the executive has signalled flexibility, and affected commercial interests have shifted strategy.
In this context, the invocation of restoring rights must be read not just as policy intent, but as political framing. The risk is not that the poor will benefit.
The risk is that they will be used as the justification for a rollback whose real gains accrue elsewhere.
In Jammu and Kashmir’s land politics, that distinction has always mattered. It matters even more now.
