JOIN USMehbooba Mufti vacates official residence at Gupkar
More than a month after administration asked her to vacate the official residence on posh Gupkar Road in Srinagar, former chief minister and PDP Mehbooba Mufti Monday relocated to a private house in the city’s outskirts.
Earlier on October 15, the Estates Department of Jammu and Kashmir government had served a notice to the PDP president to vacate her official bungalow in the high-security Gupkar area, here.
A second notice, sent 10 days later, said she was an “unauthorised occupant” and was “no longer entitled to retain the government accommodation in the capacity of ex-chief minister”, and gave her time until November 15 to move out.
“She has shifted to a private house in Khimber area on the outskirts of Srinagar city,” a PDP spokesman said.
On Saturday, the administration had also asked the PDP president to check out of a government quarter in her home district Anantnag.
Mehbooba, according to reports, has moved to a two-storey house with her mother, daughter, and personal and security staff in Khimber, an area between hills and apple orchards and poplar fields. The house belongs to her younger sister and brother-in-law who are doctors and settled in the US.
The new residence of the former chief minister Mufti’s is nearly 25 km away from city center Lal Chowk’s party office and can be reached through a narrow road from the landmark Harwan park. A further 20 minutes drive will take you to her new address, an isolated spot in the lap of mountains.
A senior PDP leader wishing anonymity said that Mehbooba took a conscious decision not to move to her Nowgam residence in Srinagar which was built by her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in the 1990s and where she started off politically under his mentorship.
Her brother (Tasaduq Mufti), who had a short-stint as tourism minister when Mehbooba was chief minister (2016-2018) lives in Nowgam residence of Muftis.
With lifetime perk guaranteed to all former chief ministers of Jammu and Kashmir gone after the government of India amended a state law, two former CM’s - Omar Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad – had already vacated official residences in 2020.
The Fairview residence of Muftis was formerly an infamous torture center, known as PAPA-II. Until 1989, it served as an official guest house. The building was occupied by the Border Security Forces in 1990 who named it PAPA-II. It continued to function as an interrogation and torture center till 1996 when Ashok Jaitley, then Chief Secretary moved in and used it as his residence.