KASHMIR
Fifty-five candidates selected through the J&K Combined Competitive Examination have joined the Jammu and Kashmir Administrative Service and J&K Accounts (Gazetted) Service, but their appointments have reignited the reservation debate. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah handed over the appointment orders at SKICC on September 15. Of the 55 officers, only 10 are from Kashmir Valley, about 18 per cent of the selections, while the Valley accounts for around 60 per cent of J&K’s population. People’s Conference chief Sajad Lone termed the figures “recruitment apartheid”, while PDP legislator Aga Muntazir Mehdi sought scrutiny of representation and the recruitment framework. Student activist Sahil Parray said only four of 28 Junior Scale JKAS officers are from Kashmir. J&K currently reserves 67 per cent of government jobs and professional admissions.
Srinagar slips to 26th as Jammu climbs to 20th in Swachh Vayu rankings, widening the clean-air divide between J&K’s two capitals.
LADAKH
Ladakhi feature film Birds on Ice, centred on the region’s ice hockey culture, has been selected for the 31st Busan International Film Festival in South Korea, where it will have its world premiere in October. Directed and produced by Sahil H Shah, the film will screen in the A Window on Asian Cinema section. Indian national ice hockey player Padma Chorol makes her acting debut as Paami, an ice hockey coach and national player.
HDFC Bank has refunded around Rs 4.50 Cr to 13 depositors affected by alleged financial irregularities at its Shopian branch, following an EOW Kashmir investigation that led to the arrest of five former bank employees and a chargesheet against 11 accused.
NOIDA
In Noida, retired engineer Ramesh Gera developed a controlled, soil-less cultivation system after experiments with Kashmir Saffron between 2018 and 2020, using racks, chilling equipment, humidifiers and controlled lighting to recreate conditions required by the crop. After two years of failures and substantial investment, his experiments began producing results in 2021. Gera later consulted experts at SKUAST-Kashmir and the Saffron Research and Development Centre at Pampore. He reportedly invested around Rs 6 lakh in the initial setup and now claims monthly revenues of up to Rs 3.5 lakh. He has since founded Akarshak Saffron Institute, which trains aspiring indoor farmers online and offline.
Two integrated solid-waste management projects worth over Rs 650 Cr have entered the second round of tendering in Jammu and Kashmir. The projects include facilities for Anantnag-Mattan-Bijbehara at Rs 383.47 crore and Kathua-Lakhanpur-Parole-Hiranagar at Rs 267.60 crore.
MUMBAI
Actor Vedang Raina returned to his Kashmiri roots at the inaugural International Film Festival of Jammu and Kashmir, where his film Main Vaapas Aaunga was the closing film. Raina said Kashmir was special to him as home and that the festival allowed him to connect with its audience and contribute to the region’s cinema culture. The film explores leaving home and the desire to return, emotions he said resonate with Kashmiris, including those affected by Partition and the displacement of Kashmiri Pandits in the 1990s. Despite his Kashmiri roots, he said filmmaker Imtiaz Ali knows the region far better and expressed a desire to work with him on a film set in Kashmir.
Jammu and Kashmir ranked 27th among 36 States and UTs in the Electric Mobility Index 2025, scoring 31 points against the national average of 42.
ROOP NAGAR
Renu Hans, a 45 year old deaf and non-speaking Kashmiri Pandit woman, has cleared her Class 10 examination with 82 per cent, 22 years after she first appeared for the test. Hans scored 406 out of 500 in the Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education examination, with her result declared on September 10. Her only son, Naman Koul, a Class 12 student, helped her prepare by tutoring her and arranging lessons around his own studies. Hans had left education after marriage but continued to aspire to complete her schooling and secure a job. The family, which migrated from Kulgam during the early 1990s, lives in Lower Roop Nagar, Jammu. Her husband, Bablu Koul, who is also deaf and non-speaking, works as a tailor from home. Hans’s achievement marks the completion of an educational journey interrupted for more than two decades.
KARGIL
The Kargil Autonomous Hill Development Council is likely to continue functioning until delimitation of constituencies for the seven Hill Councils in Ladakh is completed. The administration has sought a report from the Deputy Commissioner Kargil on the resignations of four BJP councillors, two elected and two nominated, which have not yet been accepted. The council’s five-year term is due to end in October 2028, but elections could be held earlier after seats are allocated, constituencies delimited and reservations finalised. Ladakh recently notified five new Hill Councils in Nubra, Changthang, Sham, Drass and Zanskar, in addition to Leh and Kargil. Areas of Drass, Zanskar and parts of Sham were earlier represented in the Kargil council, prompting resignations. Given the harsh winter and pending formalities, council elections are unlikely before April-May next year.
NIGEEN
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who recently returned from Delhi after meeting Iranian leaders, has announced a broader social role for Kashmir’s mosques, with religious scholars deciding to use the pulpit to address drug addiction, suicide, self-harm and environmental degradation. The decision was taken at a meeting of the Muttahida Majlis Ulema, bringing together Shia and Sunni scholars from Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Designated Fridays will focus on common social issues, with clerics seeking to reduce the stigma around counselling and professional help. The scholars also proposed turning mosques and madrasas into community welfare centres offering guidance, youth engagement and family support. They plan to travel across the region to understand local concerns.
SRINAGAR
The Jammu and Kashmir administration has begun evicting occupants of Nazool land in Srinagar where leases have expired, valid renewals are unavailable or rent remains unpaid. Notices have been issued in Polo View, Lal Chowk, Rajbagh and Karan Nagar, with several evictions scheduled for September 21. The Mohi-ud-Din Trust has been ordered to vacate its Kothibagh property after failing to establish a subsisting lease. The action follows the J&K Land Grant Rules, 2022, which provide for the return of expired non-residential leaseholds to the government. J&K holds 58,034 kanals of Nazool land, including more than 7,000 kanals in Kashmir, with 5,618 kanals leased for commercial purposes. The scale of the exercise makes it more than a routine lease-recovery drive, with significant implications for some of Srinagar’s established commercial properties.
KATHUA
Police stations in Kathua receive around six to seven missing complaints involving women and girls every month, while Samba records about five, with most reported cases involving women aged 18 to 32. A significant share of Kathua cases comes from Billawar and other rural and hilly areas, while Samba reports are frequently registered from Samba, Ghagwal, Bari Brahmana and Vijaypur. The reasons behind disappearances can vary widely:from employment and education opportunities to relationships, family pressure and domestic violence. Some cases may involve deception or trafficking, but a missing-person report by itself does not establish abduction or trafficking; each case requires investigation. The pattern also highlights the need to look beyond tracing missing women.
DELHI
Former RAW chief AS Dulat has made his fiction debut with Our Kind of Games, a novel set against the Kashmir insurgency of the early 1990s. Published by Hachette India, the book follows intelligence officer Ranjit Soni in Srinagar as he recruits militants as informants and tracks terror networks. The narrative explores espionage, betrayal, politics and the moral dilemmas of intelligence operations. Its foreword has been written by former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah. The novel is Dulat’s sixth book, following five non-fiction works on Kashmir, intelligence and India-Pakistan relations. Dulat headed RAW and served in Kashmir for decades.
URI
The Jammu and Kashmir government has formally closed the cross-LoC trade chapter at Salamabad by handing over the Trade Facilitation Centre in Uri to the Tourism Department for conversion into a border tourism facility. The centre had remained unused since cross-LoC trade was suspended in April 2019 amid security concerns. Introduced in October 2008 as a confidence-building measure, the trade operated through a duty-free, cashless barter system involving 21 mutually agreed commodities, including apples, dry fruits, handicrafts and textiles. It followed the launch of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service in 2005.
A Tourism Department official said the facility would be used for tourism and could be outsourced to generate employment and livelihood opportunities for local youth. Existing infrastructure includes accommodation, a cafeteria, park and viewpoint.
JAMMU
Land subsidence has intensified in Kheri village on the outskirts of Jammu, damaging houses and leaving residents fearful that the sinking ground could spread further. Locals have linked the phenomenon to construction of tunnels under the Jammu Ring Road project, though no technical assessment has so far established the cause. A resident said one of her two houses was completely damaged last year, for which the family received Rs 1.25 lakh in compensation. She said the sinking had widened considerably over the past month, making repairs increasingly difficult. Residents said the subsidence began after tunnel construction started and had never been witnessed by their ancestors, who have lived in the area for generations.
JAMMU
A 38-year-old newspaper vendor, Deepak Sharma, was found dead with a gunshot wound to his forehead inside his home in Krishna Nagar, Jammu, with police investigating the circumstances surrounding his death.
According to family members, Sharma had returned home from work and gone to his room. He was later found lying in a pool of blood, with a pistol near his body. Police secured the scene and shifted the body to Government Medical College, Jammu, where a postmortem was conducted.
Police said forensic evidence has been collected and the case is being investigated from all angles, including murder and suicide. Family members, however, suspect that an unidentified person may have shot Sharma and have sought a thorough investigation.
JAMMU KASHMIR
The seven-working-day autumn session of the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly, beginning September 21, has triggered a debate over legislative time, with Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and Speaker Abdul Rahim Rather defending the schedule while BJP Leader of Opposition Sunil Sharma has sought a longer sitting. Abdullah said the BJP had no standing to question the duration, while Rather said J&K averages 28 Assembly sittings a year against a national average of 24. The session is scheduled from September 21 to 30, with three non-sitting days.
Sharma has called for a month-long session and said the government should dissolve the Assembly if it believes it lacks powers to address public grievances pending restoration of statehood.
Meanwhile, Peoples Conference MLA Sajad Lone has questioned the status of his resolution on the alleged rigging of the 1987 elections, saying the Secretariat has admitted his resolution on the power tariff hike but has not communicated the status of the 1987 proposal. He has invoked Rule 179, which requires the Secretariat to inform members whether resolutions are admitted, disallowed or admitted with amendments.
Other proposed business includes a resolution by PDP MLA Waheed Para seeking a political process and one-time amnesty for eligible cases linked to years of turmoil, while MLA Aga Syed Muntazir Mehdi’s admitted private member’s resolution concerns Hokersar Wetland and issues of conservation, flooding, compensation and surrounding livelihoods.
LADAKLH
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has advised Ladakh’s political leadership not to rely on verbal assurances from the Centre and to seek written commitments on any major proposal. Referring to J&K’s own experience, Omar said the Union Government had promised restoration of statehood after Assembly elections but had not fulfilled the assurance even two years later. His remarks come as the Leh Apex Body and Kargil Democratic Alliance engage with the Ministry of Home Affairs over a proposed elected UT-level body with legislative, financial and executive powers. LAB is preparing its response to the Centre’s queries with legal advisers, while KDA has argued that the MHA should first present a draft proposal. Discussions have included direct elections to the proposed body and control over land, culture, heritage, forests, environment and natural resources. The Centre has yet to finalise its name, composition and precise powers. Meanwhile, Omar urged protesting employees and trainee doctors to pursue dialogue to resolve their demands.
