No Darbar, No Move

Raman Suri
Darbar, a word synonymous with erstwhile courts of rulers, was given to the Civil Secretariat in Jammu and Kashmir which continued to shuttle between two capital cities, Jammu and Srinagar since over 150 years, thereby incurring huge expenses on unproductive moves with no one bothered to end the practice or find a way out to facilitate the system of governance. However, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha on April 15, 2021 announced deferment of the annual darbar move from Jammu to Srinagar and subsequently after two and a half months, on June 30, 2021 cancelled the residential accommodations of ”Darbar move” employees in Jammu as well as Srinagar asking them to vacate their quarters in the twin capital cities within three weeks.
The decision might not have gone down the throats of many having vested interests but those who understand the implications of such futile exercises in these modern day times, when computerisation, softwares and applications besides electronic gadgets are capable of enabling smooth functioning of offices from anywhere around the globe, know that this is going to save not only tax payers’ money but also six weeks time that always went into packing, repacking, transporting and then rearranging files, computers, fax machines, telephones, kettles, cups, plates, pens and pencils besides all vital documents.
As if this annual colossal exercise was not enough, the Government also used to pay Travelling Allowance (TA) to each and every employee, latest being Rs 25,000 each to almost 10,122 darbar move employees this year that was paid in advance. These employees used to move to Srinagar in April and return to Jammu in October every year and during the time of packaging and reopening of darbar move files, entire work in Civil Secretariat and move offices remained suspended while employees continued to get salaries and perks regularly. It is estimated that in 2019 alone an amount of Rs 18,958 Lakh was incurred on the darbar move including salaries and perks disbursed to the employees.
Still shocking was that during darbar move, non-gazetted as well as gazetted employees were asked to pay a nominal amount of money as food expense while none of them ever paid electricity or water bills for even the quarters they stated in during the darbar move periods. Since, majority of the employees used to travel in their own cars, the buses hired for the purposes of ferrying employees plied with little occupancy. Articles transported in trucks used to get damaged and then an additional amount of money was required for their repair, thereby hampering the office workings as well.
Way back during the time of Maharajas about 150 years ago, the darbar used to move only a few officers and the official record was carried in tongas (Horse-carts). Gradually the system continued to evolve on its own and today, over 151 Government Departments and more than 10,000 employees with their files and baggage are made to move in about 150 trucks at a whopping cost of Rs 200 crore annually only to waste money, public time and energy in such an unproductive exercise despite government having switched over to e-governance mode.
Now that there exists no darbar, the question of moving so-called darbar doesn’t exists as well. To make it more practical, the Government also took another historic decision by cancelling the residential accommodations of ”darbar move” employees in Jammu as well as Srinagar, asking officials to vacate their quarters in the twin capital cities within three weeks. This will pave a way for smooth functioning of the Civil Secretariat at both places through e-governance thereby saving a lot of time and money which used to come as Security Related Expenditure (SRE) from the Central Government.
Now that Commissioner Secretary Estates Department, M Raju has issued the order of cancellation of allotment of residential accommodation of officers and officials in Srinagar and Jammu, thousands of quarters at various places will all be vacated.
With this order, the age old practice, under which the administration used to function in Jammu during the six months of winter and in Srinagar during the summer, started by Maharaja Gulab Singh in 1872 comes to an end in the larger interest of the employees as well as common people for whom chasing the files used to be a herculean task after the move of darbar from one place to another for six months. Issue of discontinuing the move was very occasionally raised during the past and it never saw the light of the day for one or the other reasons. An attempt was also made by former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah in 1980 to halt the darbar permanently at Srinagar, which had led to a 45-day long agitation in Jammu after which the order was cancelled.
Since the Government intends to make employees as well as common people comfortable, the decision is not only historic but timely as well. However, what will be the fate of these quarters/accommodations is not known but those in good conditions and located at isolated places must be auctioned while those in old city or located in the crowded places and that have outlived their lives must be razed to ground only to pave a way for developing sites as parks and parking places to add lung spaces to the city and its peripheries. Atleast quarters at Kachi Chawni, Panjtirthi, Rehari, B C Road and Talab Tillo in Jammu need to pave a way for development of parks and parking spaces to add aesthetics to the city. Similar kind of arrangement can also be done for Srinagar to decongest it.
Some believe that darbar move was a move inspired from Mughal emperor Jahangir who during his visit to Kashmir was fascinated with its beauty and every year during summers would temporarily move there along with his wife Noor Jahan and courtiers besides official documents. This practice continued even after that but was not appreciated in recent past especially when e-Governance and better infrastructures at both places in Jammu as well as Srinagar provided ample opportunities to stop this colossal exercise and save millions of rupees only to spend on productive projects and welfare of people.
Those offices that used to move every year included Ministers, High Court Judges, all bureaucrats, middle rung officers, clerical staff and class IV employees besides several offices located outside secretariat complexes. Other than these, the Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) offices, top brass of police, Accounts & Treasury, Prisons and Fire and Emergency Services, Director of the Anti-Corruption Bureau and several other corporations also used to move to Srinagar in summers and Jammu in winters.
Interestingly, even the Division Bench of the J&K High Court, comprising of the then-Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Rajnesh Oswal, while pronouncing its judgment in response to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by one Azra Ismail in 2020 had said that the darbar move resulted in the “wastage of tremendous amount of time, efforts and energy on an inefficient and unnecessary activity. It may be recalled that most of the Government quarters at Kachi Chawni, Panjtirthi and other such places were constructed after demolishing erstwhile Maharaja’s stables and other such facilities where elephants and horses used to be kept.
During demolition of these historic sites, wooden beams and artefacts were recovered and there’s no mention of those expensive and unique articles or wooden beams taken out of the facilities at Panjtirthi or Kachi Chawni. Now that Mubarak Mandi Heritage Complex is being restored to its lost glory, it will need more open space within its vicinity or periphery for developing parks and parking slots to accommodate visitors. Places where quarters will now be abandoned can serve as a right place for developing such facilities.
(The writer is BJP Executive Member J&K UT)

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