Srinagar: The Jammu & Kashmir Evacuees’ Property Department, responsible for the administration of partition-era properties, is facing concerns over stagnation in its operations despite recent attempts at modernization. The department, which manages properties left behind during the 1947 partition, launched an advanced online portal designed to streamline processes and improve transparency in the management of evacuee properties across the Union Territory. The portal aims to enable efficient data management, facilitate record updates, and enhance administration through modern technological solutions.
However, on the ground, many stakeholders are expressing frustration. Those with leased properties under the department’s administration claim they are caught in prolonged bureaucratic delays, with little movement on critical requests such as lease renewals, transfer rights, and registration updates. Complaints highlight a complete standstill in the issuance of transfer rights to long-term lessees, preventing them from establishing clear ownership or making legally recognized changes to their holdings.
In effect, many leaseholders report an uncertain future, without access to documentation updates that could secure their rights or facilitate property transactions. According to sources close to the department, structural and procedural bottlenecks have hindered substantial progress despite the promising digital revamp.
“With no clear pathway for transfer or lease amendments, we are left in a bind,” voiced a long-term lessee, describing a sense of “chasing a dark future.” The growing demand is for the department to expedite the long-overdue registration and transfer procedures, empowering leaseholders with security over their rights and bringing much-needed clarity to the processes governing evacuee properties.
The irony is that the very bright policy introduced in 2010 by the erstwhile State Government, which helped the Department earn crores of rupees and shed light on lease holding rights permissions, renovation, and transfers, has been strangely made defunct by verbal words,not by any formal order, for the past five years. The need of the hour is to revive that policy to help the department earn and also ease out the problems of the masses.
Calls for streamlining processes, simplifying workflows, and addressing backlog issues are at the forefront of stakeholders’ demands. A strategic response to these issues could revitalize the department’s purpose, balancing historical responsibility with the demands of modern property administration.
