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states
After a long time, J&K was largely peaceful, enabling the state to claim a booming tourist season
Khushamdeed.
Welcome to Jammu and Kashmir. The year was marked by a record number
of tourists visiting the Valley and a record number of pilgrims
turning up to have a darshan of the shrine of Mata Vaishno Devi. After
three consecutive years of turmoil (Amarnath row, Shopian rape and
killing, stone pelting), the year was largely peaceful, enabling the
government to hold as many as 350 cricket matches in the Valley for
the Kashmir Premier League and hold panchayat elections in the entire
state after 33 years.
The opening of the Banihal tunnel, an engineering feat, reduced the distance between Qazigund and Banihal from 35 km to just 11 km. The Central University finally began functioning and the three interlocutors appointed by the Union Home Ministry submitted their report and recommended a road-map for the state. For the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, however, it remained a roller-coaster ride. His tweets kept him in the news even as he managed to introduce e-tendering in some of the departments and launch "Project Himayat", under which 1,00,000 Kashmiri youth will be trained by the government and employed in the private sector, mostly outside the state. But his determination to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from four districts ran into opposition and the death under controversial circumstances, of a party worker, who was allegedly beaten up in the CM’s residence, cast a cloud that the next year may clear. Srinagar, however, remains the only city in the country to have no cinema hall and just a few liquor vends. A suggestion to have more of them sparked a controversy with fundamentalists opposing the move.
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