Free Speech Collective
Six years after the abrogation of Art 370 and the resumption of an elected government, albeit for a union territory, the situation of the media in Jammu and Kashmir (J & K) continues to remain grim. Journalists continue to face censorship, detentions and show cause notices, their passports remain suspended or revoked, there is selective and discriminatory disbursal of advertising for newspapers under the media policy while a watchful administration reporting directly to New Delhi keeps journalists on the edge.
There were high expectations after the takeover of the Omar Abdullah government, which came after nearly six-years of presidential rule in Jammu and Kashmir, that there will be some semblance of normalcy for the local media, reeling under a chilling effect of state repression, post-2019.
Read the FSC report on Kashmir’s information blockade here: News Behind The Barbed Wire: Kashmir’s Information Blockade
At the outset, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah did take some encouraging steps, including advocating for press freedom in Kashmir and initiatives like calling journalists for a freewheeling interaction. Kashmir’s famed press club faced a state-backed coup, and its building now holds a police-subaltern office. Omar Abdullah vowed to revive the old-press club along with its management and its office-bearers who had been shunted out by the state for their unbending resolve to truthful and independent journalism.
Despite these promises, their vital translation on the ground is nowhere in sight. After being in office for nine months, the Chief Minister struggles for power and diverts his prime attention to statehood return.
For Omar Abdullah, the going has not been easy and he has faced criticism, though he did get attention for climbing the wall of the Khwaja Naqshband Sahib shrine, after the LG imposed house arrest for Kashmiri political leaders to prevent them from offering prayers to mark the anniversary of the July 13 killing of 22 Kashmiri protestors by the Dogra king Hari Singh in 1931.
In J&K’s union territory setup, there is little an elected head of government can do. Key powers to handle police and higher administration lie with the New Delhi-appointed Lieutenant Governor (LG), Manoj Sinha (the BJP leader from Uttar Pradesh, Sinha was former Union Railways minister who lost the Ghazipur Parliamentary election in 2019 and was appointed LG in 2020, a day after the first anniversary of the abrogation of Art 370).
Social media gets a breather…but for whom?
However, despite the constraints the Chief Minister’s office operates in and the tight grip of the Centre over the local media, the only relaxation due to the presence of an elected government is in social media. Operating under surveillance for long years with the 24 x 7 monitoring of dissent and the unprecedented blockade of all communication from August 2019 to February 2021, social media spaces has opened up to some extent.
Social media platforms publish criticism of the Omar Abdullah government but there are also political discussions and issues like employment, environmental concerns or developmental issues are more prevalent now. Yet, the tone is cautious and social media commentary is not overly critical or high-pitched, careful to ensure that the comments don’t infuriate the rulers of law and order.
Interestingly, while Sinha did take full responsibility for the dastardly Pahalgam attack and termed it as a security lapse, local media was silent over the failure of intelligence agencies or of security forces (Even Satya Pal Malik, who was Governor of J&K in 2019, minced no words in his last interview to the news portal The Wire, before his passing on Aug 5, 2025, as he said Prime Minister Narendra Modi “must apologize” to the country for permitting Pahalgam to happen).
But when senior journalist Hilal Mir, commented on the attack, he was detained by J & K Police on charges of promoting “disaffection” against India and “secessionist ideology” through his social media accounts. He had to take down a Facebook post that commented on the plight of Kashmiris post the attack.
Post-Pahalgam, the fall in tourism and the impact on the economy, the media in Kashmir continues to be heavily dependent on state advertising. The death knell for a healthy media had already been sounded in 2020, with a media policy that has built in provisions to criminalise independent media and journalists and privilege the more pliant media.
Independent online media which eschewed government advertising is still to recover from the long period of internet shutdown and criminal cases lodged against its editors. For instance, The Kashmir Walla is unable to resume publication after the jailing of its editor Fahad Shah and the freezing of its accounts.
Six years of a repressive new normal with no sign of a return to full statehood (though a plea for restoration of statehood is slated to come up before the Supreme Court on Aug 8), Kashmir’s media continues to struggle to survive. Far from speaking truth to power, it remains silent and powerless.
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