Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir administration's takeover of the iconic Nedou's Hotel last week, following a prolonged legal battle, has triggered a wave of uncertainty and fear among hoteliers in the north Kashmir ski resort of Gulmarg.

The 137-year-old hotel which has been a witness to J&K's turbulent history and its colonial past was taken over by the administration on August 4 in the presence of security personnel, amid apprehensions of resistance from the owners, the Nedou family.

The takeover happened after the Supreme Court refused to intervene in a 2018 judgement of the J&K high court which upheld the eviction order issued in 2015 by the Gulmarg Development Authority (GDA) against the Nedou family under Jammu and Kashmir Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorised Occupants) Act, 1988.

The iconic hotel perched on the foothills of Mount Apharwat in the Pir Panjal mountain range was established in 1888 by the Croatian hotelier Michael Adam Nedou who discovered Gulmarg as an ideal retreat for foreigners.

His son, Michael Henry Nedou, is learnt to have converted Islam and married a Gujjar woman from Jammu and Kashmir. The couple’s daughter Akbar Jahan was married to Sheikh Abdullah, J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah’s grandfather and the founder of the ruling National Conference.

Umer Khaleel Nedou, Michael Adam Nedou's great grandson, was its last proprietor when the GDA officials took over the property. At that time, his wife Dilnavaz ‘Daisy’ Nedou worked as the managing director.

Lease 'controversy'

Official documents show that a land parcel in Gulmarg was leased out to the Nedous in 1963 for two years which was later extended for 20 more years ending on 31 December 1985. The court observed in 2021 in a separate case that the lease agreements in Gulmarg were extendable up to 99 years.

After the expiry of the lease, the family approached J&K chief secretary with an application seeking the renewal of the agreement but there was no response for nearly three decades. On February 4, 2015, the J&K government informed the family that their plea had been rejected and a show cause notice of eviction was served by the GDA on March 31, 2015.

The Nedou family led by Umer took the matter to the J&K high court, arguing that the lease agreements of all the hotels in Gulmarg except the five-star Khyber Resort have lapsed and a committee has been set up in 2009 to look into the issue of the renewal of these agreements.

However, the high court ruled in 2018 that the Nedous were “illegal” occupants of the property in Gulmarg as their lease had expired in 1985. A double bench headed by then Chief Justice of the J&K high court Gita Mittal observed that the “grant of lease or license of public property is dispensation of state largesse, but renewal thereof is a privilege.”

The court added: “Neither the petitioner nor the other persons whose leases have expired, have any legal right to continue to occupy the leased properties. In such eventuality, the respondents (GDA) would require to be directed to ensure that strict action is taken by them for recovery of all public properties which are illegally and unauthorizedly occupied, unless there are binding orders of any court interdicting such action by the respondents”.

Dilnavaz Nedou, the managing director of Nedou’s, told The Wire: “We have been singled out for reasons best known to the administration. I requested them (GDA officials) to at least give us two days to take out our personal belongings but they didn’t relent. Even the food in the kitchen was on the stoves when we were asked to leave”.

The chief executive officer of GDA Tariq Hussain Naik however denied the allegation, “We went by the rules and the court orders before taking over the property,” he said.

Fear and concern

Before August 5, 2019, when Jammu and Kashmir was a state, the GDA's board of directors (BoD) was headed by the chief minister. However, after Article 370 was read down, J&K’s lieutenant governor replaced the chief minister as GDA board chairman.

In 2021, the J&K high court, while hearing a 2012 public interest litigation on preserving the environs of eco-fragile Gulmarg, ruled that the government should “take a conscious decision” on the issue of renewal of lease agreements.

“As they (proprietors of hotels with expired lease deeds) are not unauthorised occupants of the land, rather tenants by holding over, they cannot be evicted from their respective lands, more particularly in view of the condition of the lease that they are not liable to be evicted unless they are paid compensation to the structures which they raised,” the court observed.

However, in 2022, the Jammu and Kashmir Land Grant Rules 2022 was enacted by the LG administration which ruled that all the commercial land lease agreements executed under older rules in Jammu and Kashmir cannot be renewed.

Against this backdrop, the eviction of Nedous has had a chilling effect on hundreds of hoteliers in Gulmarg who continue to operate their businesses from commercial establishments built on the state land whose lease agreements have expired.

“Nedou’s is not just any property,” Daisy said, “It is an iconic place and an important part of Kashmir’s rich cultural past. Do they want to erase our history? They might erase it from newspapers and books but they can’t erase it from the minds of people”.

With a new law covering land lease issues in place from 2022 and the GDA going ahead with the implementation of the 2018 judgement of the high court, concerns are mounting that the hotels in Gulmarg may go up for grabs in the coming months.

An official of the Kashmir Chambers of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) told The Wire that a meeting of tourism industry stakeholders was going to be called to discuss the implications of the eviction of Nedous.

“It is a serious matter which will have grave ramifications for local industry,” the KCCI official said, “Our hoteliers have worked hard to keep the tourism industry running over these years despite all the challenges. If the leases are put on auction, it can change the makeup of Gulmarg”.

What has deepened the anxieties is that the Nedous who took their legal battle all the way up to the Supreme Court to retain the possession of the prized property in the main bowl of Gulmarg happen to be the relatives of J&K chief minister.

“The eviction has effectively put a sword on our necks and we don’t know when it is going to come down,” said a hotelier from Gulmarg, who spoke with The Wire on the condition of anonymity, “If it can happen to one of the most prominent names in Kashmir’s hotel industry, it can happen with anyone”.

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