J&K Assembly Erupts Over Sheikh Abdullah, Maharaja Hari Singh Holiday Row
For half an hour on Tuesday, the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly stopped functioning as a legislature and became more like a battlefield of memory, one where the past itself was on trial, and both sides refused to yield.
The spark was a demand. National Conference legislator Abdul Majeed Larmi rose and asked for December 5, the birth anniversary of National Conference founder Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, to be restored as an official holiday and for September 8, the Sheikh's death anniversary, to be added as a new one. Then came the line that lit the fuse: if both dates for Sheikh Abdullah wouldn't be honoured, Larmi argued, then the holiday for the last Dogra ruler of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh's birth anniversary, should be scrapped too.
The BJP benches erupted. Legislators sprang to their feet, chanting "Maharaja Hari Singh ki Jai," accusing Larmi of insulting the last Dogra ruler and trampling on the sentiments of those who still revere him. The treasury benches answered fire with fire: "Sher-i-Kashmir Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Zindabad" rang out in response, as NC members cast the Sheikh as a freedom fighter who stood against autocratic rule.
For half an hour, the House was noisy, not business. Speaker Abdul Rahim Rathertried to restore order, insisting that neither he nor the Assembly had any power to grant or withdraw a holiday in the first place, a technicality that did little to cool tempers already running hot.
A Fight Rooted in 2019
This isn't a fight about calendars. It's a fight about who gets remembered, and how.
The current flashpoint traces back to August 2019, when Article 370 was abrogated, and the state was carved into two Union Territories. The Lieutenant Governor-led administration that followed quietly struck several holidays from the books, Sheikh Abdullah's birth anniversary among them, along with Kashmir Martyrs' Day on July 13.
A Promise Still Unkept
The politics here cut close to home for Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. During the 2024 Assembly campaign, the National Conference promised to bring back July 13 and December 5, while also signalling it had no intention of touching Hari Singh's birth anniversary holiday. Two years on, neither restoration has happened, leaving the party exposed to exactly the kind of floor confrontation it witnessed Tuesday.
The session had a coda of its own. Later in the day, every BJP legislator but one walked out, accusing the Abdullah government of ignoring the everyday problems of the people. The lone holdout, Yudhvir Sethi, stayed back to hear the Chief Minister's answer to his own Question Hour query, and got a public compliment for it. "This is the difference between asli and naqli MLAs," Abdullah remarked, praising Sethi as a "true representative" of his constituents.
The clash leaves an old wound freshly reopened: in Jammu and Kashmir, even the calendar remains contested ground.