Kashmir’s Rs 700-crore willow-bat industry, feeding nearly 400 units and 1.5 lakh livelihoods, is bleeding raw material to smugglers even as manufacturers themselves stay complicit in the leakage. A High Court ruling has now exposed a six-year-old legal vacuum that has left the export ban unenforceable since Jammu and Kashmir’s reorganisation, reports Masood Hussain
Cricket is India’s other religion, and Jammu and Kashmir has always supplied one of its most quietly essential ingredients: the willow that becomes the bat. For decades, though, the region’s contribution to the game stayed confined to raw material. It grew the wood, but rarely got to keep the credit, the craftsmanship value, or even the players.
That is beginning to change finally. For the first time in history, the Jammu and Kashmir Team wrested the Ranji Trophy from the 8-time champion team of Karnataka. A quarter later, Auqib Nabi, the Baramulla-born pace bowler, was picked for India’s Test squad touring Sri Lanka. He became only the third cricketer from the region to earn a senior India call-up, after Parvez Rasool and Umran Malik.
Off the field, Kashmir-made bats are finally being noticed on the biggest stages too. A GR8 Sports bat crafted in South Kashmir’s Sangam went into the hands of UAE batter Junaid Siddique for a 109-metre six at the 2022 T20 World Cup, and Sri Lankan all-rounder Thisara Perera has also played with Kashmir willow.
Behind these emerging success stories, however, lies a much older and more troubled story: the raw willow is leaving Kashmir faster than it can be replaced. While the ‘smuggling’ is accumulating profits in Meerut and Jalandhar, almost 400 native bat makers are facing the music. While the sale of the raw material is banned by law, the legal and administrative vacuum has failed to link it with new legal infrastructure that was rolled out in the erstwhile state after August 2019. This was exposed by a judgement that the Jammu and Kashmir High Court delivered in a willow cleft smuggling case.
A Fragile Industry
Kashmir remains India’s only source of the willow used in cricket bat manufacturing. It is a natural monopoly built on Kashmir’s climate, soil, and the light, shock-absorbent grain of Salix alba, the white willow. Kashmir’s bat manufacturing dates back to the early 1920s, when it was a major hub for hockey sticks, made from mulberry wood and cricket bats, carved out of Kashmir willow. It now has around 400 units operating mostly in south Kashmir in the Awantipora-Bijbehara belt, mostly operating from either side of the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway (NH-44) near Sangam. Fawzul Kabir, Vice President of Kashmir Bat Manufacturers Association, said the entire sector is making around three million bats a year, and the industry sales are around Rs 700 crore.
The traders who are running the show today are survivors of a turmoil that exacted a high cost from the industry. The Jammu and Kashmir government had recognised the importance of the sector well before Kashmir became a blood-soaked dateline in newspapers. In 1981, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah drove to Bijbehara to formally inaugurate the SICOP-owned industrial area, equipped with common facilities for bat manufacturers. In 1985, several units were allotted space and shifted their operations to the designated area. Then militancy erupted. One day, when the bat makers arrived at work, they found their entire industrial base occupied by security forces. That was in 1990.
They began seeking the return of their premises, but there was little they could do in the absence of an elected government. Some went broke. Those who survived restarted their businesses from rented premises. The struggle to reclaim the industrial area continued for years, and they finally succeeded in 2013, when the government relocated the security forces and asked the original allottees to reclaim their spaces.
By then, however, the Sports Complex had lost its centrality to the industry. Bat makers from Halmulla and Sangam had returned to their villages and established small facilities there. Some even declined to reclaim their allotted spaces when the Complex was restored. They did not know they would have to migrate yet again.
When the NH-44 was upgraded, most of them had to move and reinvest in new facilities closer to the highway, which now ran through what had become their backyard. Apart from Bijbehara, it is this new industrial belt that has emerged as the main source of some of the best bats manufactured in Kashmir. Kabir said there is only one unit operating from Bijbehara, and the government in 2019 declared 500 meters on either side of the new NH-44 from Donipora to Jawbiara as the industrial area for facilities and benefits as a sports industrial area.
It is this belt, which is, by regional standards, a significant economic engine. However, insiders point out that the engine is running low on fuel.
Kabir, who owns GR8 Sports, is Kashmir’s only ICC-approved bat manufacturer, asserted that “the raw material is the real crisis we are facing” as Kashmir’s willow base is shrinking fast.
Recently when Chief Minister Omar Abdullah drove to the bat-manufacturing area, Kabir said the manufacturers put four requests before him. “We briefed him about the rapid shrinking of willow plantations and requested that the Forest authorities be directed to undertake fresh plantations. We also urged him to enforce the ban on the smuggling of willow clefts,” Kabir said. “We also sought a fire station in the area, which has a concentration of wood-based units, besides a trauma centre.” He said the government has assured the industry it will examine ways to strengthen the sector.
Within days after Omar’s visit, the forest department has decided to undertake massive willow plantation across 1200 hectares of marshland at Haran-Shalabugh (Ganderbal), 100 hectares at Momandaji (Bijbehara) and another 100 hectares of social forestry land to meet the bat industry’s demand. The department estimates the industry produces around 25 lakh clefts and finished bats annually, requiring 50,000–60,000 willow trees, and is preparing a 15–20-year plan to gradually remove mature trees and replace them with willow clones. Officials said mature trees cannot be removed simultaneously as it could disrupt the industry, making phased removal, marshland mapping and a balance between felling and replantation essential
The Real Crisis
The economics of the crisis are, at their core, straightforward. A willow log becomes valuable only after it is felled, cut into clefts, seasoned, shaped, pressed, fitted with a handle, polished, branded and packaged. Each of those stages adds value and creates jobs. Kashmir, under a law meant to protect exactly this chain, is supposed to keep all of it within the territory.
The Jammu and Kashmir Willow (Prohibition of Export and Movement) Act, 2000, and an outright ban on cleft export introduced in 2005 (tightening a 1999 quota system that had allowed up to two lakh clefts out annually), exist precisely to stop unprocessed willow from leaving Kashmir. Every cleft smuggled out of Kashmir takes away part of the economic opportunity also.
In practice, industry figures say the ban is porous. Bat makers estimate that 10 to 15 lakh willow clefts are moved out of Jammu and Kashmir illegally every year. These are often concealed within legitimate cargo to slip past an inspection, if any.
“There are 10-12 so-called bat manufacturers who are into the cleft smuggling,” Kabir said. “The government is aware of it, and we have already given the names to the forest department.” A sector insider said they have briefed the government about the kingpin who is ensuring the cleft passage out of Lakhanpur for Rs 90 per cleft, and it is being done off-road, manually. “People take these cleft on foot and cross into Punjab,” the insider said. “Interestingly, the person is the buyer, and he foots the bill of his Kashmir suppliers.” Lakhanpur, which is far away from the raw material, has almost half a dozen ‘bat manufacturing’ units, and some of them belong to Kashmiris from the same Sangam belt. A general belief within the sector is that these units are cleft stores.
Another sector insider, speaking on the condition of anonymity, gave it a different angle, perhaps not talked about so far. “The willow smugglers mix Fukki with clefts, and once they reach the destinations, they earn hugely from Fukki and sell the clefts at throwaway costs,” the insider said. “That is why I am unable to compete. Meerut uses Kashmir clefts and sells a finished bat for Rs 950, and my production cost is Rs 2250 apiece.”
Fukki is an intoxicating drink that truckers have made popular in the plains in the last 30 years. It is the straw of the poppy plants that is ground into powder and boiled and drunk. The bat manufacturing area in Kashmir falls in the key drug hotspots in the police records.
Industrialist Syed Shakeel Qalandar has seen the rise and fall and rerise of Kashmir’s manufacturing sector for almost the last 50 years. “Cleft smuggling is well known, but some unscrupulous people from the sector send semi-finished bats with temporary handles to Meerut and Jalandhar, and they make the finished product,” he regretted. “Now, some young boys are in the field who are aware, and they have decided not to sell unfinished or semi-finished willow.”
Handle making is a super craft. Usually, the Singapore cane is used in multiple pieces with rubber inserts and glue to ensure flexibility and shock absorption. Kashmir has been chiselling bats for a century, but the handle has remained a skill deficit. “Not now,” asserts Kabir. “So far, 47 international players have used Kashmir bats in the last few years, and this all is happening in Kashmir. The semi-finished diversions are minimal now.”
Despite the strict ban on smuggling, the seizures have remained routine.
In 2015, Excise officials seized 9,760 willow clefts from two trucks using an illicit route along the Ujh River to bypass the toll barriers. In the same year, another truck with 4,346 clefts was seized as it had documents suggesting it was carrying almond kernels.
In 2016, officials intercepted another truck carrying about 5,000 clefts concealed in empty apple boxes. In 2017, 4590 clefts were seized at Lakhanpur in a truck that carried ‘basmati rice’ as per documents.
“Detecting these trucks was becoming very difficult as the sender and receiver were the same persons running two facilities, one in Pulwama and another in Lakhanpur,” one officer who has worked at the erstwhile Toll Plaza said. “People crying over the mess are part of the same mess.”
A Law without a Procedure
On December 12, 2023, a truck carrying willow clefts from Pulwama, ostensibly bound for Meerut, was stopped by forest officials. The e-way bill and physical count did not match. The 6150 clefts were found against a nominally cleared consignment for poplar clefts, and the driver could not produce documents authorising export outside Jammu and Kashmir. Both the clefts and the truck, belonging to M/S Mymoona Sports and M/S Jammu Indore Roadways, respectively, were seized and, after a protracted back-and-forth between the Authorised Officer and the appellate forest authorities, were ultimately confiscated in October 2024.
The petitioners took the matter to the High Court, and Justice MA Chowdhary’s July 2026 judgment turned out to be about far more than one truckload of wood. The Court found that the entire confiscation apparatus built to enforce the Willow Act had effectively collapsed after Jammu and Kashmir’s 2019 reorganisation.
A 2003 government order (SRO 308) had prescribed a confiscation procedure by borrowing it from the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir Forest Act, 1987. But that Act was repealed and replaced by the Indian Forest Act, 1927 after reorganisation and no fresh notification was ever issued spelling out how confiscations under the Willow Act should actually be conducted.
The result, the Court held, was that officials had been confiscating willow and vehicles for years “illegal, ab initio, without any legal backing to the procedure.” It further ruled that in cases involving privately owned property, as opposed to government forest produce, confiscation cannot be finalised unless the accused has actually been convicted in a criminal court. In the Mymoona Sports case, no criminal case had even been registered, let alone concluded.
The Court was careful not to let the ruling read as an invitation to smugglers. It reaffirmed the constitutional weight of environmental protection under Articles 48-A and 51-A(g), and directed the Forest Department to submit, within eight weeks, a formal proposal for a new notification or standing order prescribing exactly how seized willow and vehicles should be handled. Until such a procedure exists, the judgment effectively means that forest, industries and police officials cannot lawfully confiscate anything seized under the Willow Act, a legal vacuum that cuts against the very protection the ban was designed to provide.
For an industry that has spent years pressing for stricter enforcement of the export ban, the irony is sharp. The law meant to protect them has been unenforceable for want of paperwork the government simply never got around to issuing.
The reorganisation devoured another major facility for the manufacturing sector, the Lakhanpur Toll Plaza. Every truck that used to enter would stop and pay a toll, and that was helping the state to impose taxes on certain items that would protect its own industry. This spot would also stop outgoing trucks to see what was going out and where. That industry is desperate to see the return of the gate so that the Jammu and Kashmir market survives.
The Deeper Threat
Kashmir, Meerut and Jalandhar require almost five million clefts every year to keep the show going. Even a perfectly enforced export ban would not solve the industry’s underlying problem in Kashmir. The fact is that not enough willow is left to be protected.
For over a century, Kashmir’s bat industry has run on wood harvested largely from trees that were never systematically replanted. Kashmir willow takes up to 25 years to mature, and roughly 70,000 to 1 lakh trees are needed annually just to sustain current production. Historically, most of that supply has come from the periphery where farmers would grow along rivers, streams and wetlands, particularly in south Kashmir.
The resource base is disappearing. Some bat-making units have already been closed for lack of raw material. Sawmill owners and timber traders in south Kashmir describe watching local streams and water bodies dry up over the past two decades, a trend accelerated by an unusually dry winter in 2025-26 that saw little of the snowfall the region has traditionally relied on, even during Chilla-e-Kalan, the customary 40-day peak of winter. With a shallow root system, willow is hugely dependent on surface and near-surface water. As that water has disappeared, so has the willow.
Farmers would grow willow on irrigation streams passing through paddy fields. After these swathes were converted into apple orchards, willow was the first to be axed because apple would not grow better in its shade.
“Growing willow is non-remunerative,” Shabir Ahmad, who has almost axed all his willow plantation in a Shopian village, said. “It takes too long a time to become market-worthy, and then the traders come and take it at a cost that is almost the fuel wood, and then these logs become the prized bats, the profit of which is retained by them.” He said if the willow is so costly for the market, why does not part of the cost go to the farmer?
Around lakes and wetlands, farmers would use willow to help the water bodies solidify and accelerate eutrophication. As the water bodies choked, the court stepped in, and mass felling was ordered. More than 300 thousand trees, mostly willows, were axed within and around Dal Lake between 2005 and 2007.
Now, for the last few years, the focus has shifted to Wular Lake, which has grown shallow and squeezed substantially. Its retention capacity is fundamental to the flooding of Srinagar city.
The total estimated number of willow trees in and around Wular Lake is approximately 19-21 lakh. However, the Comprehensive Management Action Plan (CMAP), 2007, does not envisage blanket removal of all willow plantations; rather, it prescribes selective, phased and need-based removal in line with lake restoration and habitat management objectives. Accordingly, under the Willow Action Plan, 1.91 lakh willow trees were identified for removal in the first phase, of which approximately 1.35 lakh have already been removed for ecological restoration. The intervention has generated revenue of approximately Rs 31.96 crore.
Industry figures warn the timeline for a full-blown crisis is short. They expect mass closures within a decade if the raw material is not replenished. Closing smuggling may reduce willow exploitation, the stakeholders believe.
The only people crying over the willow shortage are the bat manufacturers because it impacts their business. The voices being raised by many others are lost in that din.
Ecology experts believe the willow is vital outside the pitch also. With a high transpiration rate, it functions as a long-term carbon sink across its multi-decade growth cycle, storing carbon far more effectively than fast-harvested species like poplar. It also plays a role in stabilising soil along the riverbanks and wetlands where it traditionally grew, and has a history of medicinal and household use as well.
A Crisis Right Now
“Kashmir possesses one natural advantage: it’s the only place in the world, save England, that grows the variety of willow trees needed for cricket bats. English willow is the best in quality. So, English bats are very expensive and unaffordable for the millions of people playing cricket in developing countries,” Swaminathan Aiyar wrote in The Economic Times earlier this year. “Britain’s Gunn & Moore sells bats online for $265. By contrast, bats made from Kashmir willow can be dirt cheap. One online offering is for just Rs 120 ($1.30). Kashmir can hugely increase its value addition by ensuring quality.”
But the crisis is interesting. Kashmir is not competing with Britain. It is competing with Meerut and is falling flat. It has enough raw material for its units for the time being and has legal cover to stop exports. However, stakeholders include people within the camp who smuggle, and the government has left a loophole that the court has finally exposed.
At stake is a Rs 700 Cr sector with 150 thousand people involved. Who will bell the cat: the government or the bat manufacturers? It remains to be seen.
