In a major decision the Government of Jammu & Kashmir will be celebrating Accession Day October 26th, the day when Maharaja Hari Singh signed Instrument of Accession to be part of the union of India. The state government has released the list of holidays for 2020 under the negotiable instruments act where October 26th has been added to the list of holidays to be observed.
Consequently, the erstwhile holiday for the so-called ‘Martyrs Day’ and the holiday on Sheikh Abdullah’s birthday have been excluded from the list. The ‘Martyrs Day’ which was hitherto observed on 13 July was surreptitiously included to show Maharaja of Kashmir in poor light. An Islamic Jihadi uprising was crushed ably by the Dogra forces in 1931 but the pro-Islamist state governments had included it as a holiday.
Another holiday which was a symbol of nepotism was the holiday for Sheikh Abdullah’s birthday on 5th December. The holiday was included when his son Farooq Abdullah was the CM of the state. The administration of the state which was mostly with a few families in Jammu & Kashmir since Independence had run the state as per their whims and fancies. The abrogation of Article 370 and re-organisation of the state by Narendra Modi’s government put an end to such state patronage of a few families.
The updated list of holidays in Jammu and Kashmir is below:
