THE opposition to the Shrine Board acquisition of the land has its roots in a sense of insecurity about any land transfer in Kashmir. People also raised serious questions about timing and purpose of this land transfer. The Shrine Board was constituted as a body to provide and improve services for the pilgrims with the active help of the state Government, police, civilian administration, army, paramilitary forces and also the local Muslim population. This has been happening for past more than a century. Why does the Shrine Board want land to be transferred to them when they already are using this land for decades for the yatra? If the Shrine Board is working to make the yatra smoother for the pilgrims, what scope does it have to conduct massive Sufi festivals everywhere? Why does Raj Bhavan use the Shrine Board to define the cultural and religious ethos of Kashmir in one particular manner? These questions have fuelled the fire of controversy.
Raj Bhavan’s desire to wrest control over land has dismayed many, especially since they see the Shrine Board as being an extra constitutional entity, outside legislative oversight. This has happened twice: the legislators asked questions about the functioning of the board and were told they could not ask questions to the constitutional head of the state. This means that whenever the elected legislators had queries about the functioning of the Shrine Board, its chairman took refuge in the constitutional privileges of the office of Governor.
When the new Governor N.N. Vohra took over on June 25, he had his job cut out for him. Kashmir has literally returned to the 1990s with hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets protesting about the land transfer. The situation is fast polarising the state along communal lines and if the crisis is not addressed immediately, it will cause the Government much harm, especially in an election year.

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