Urdu no longer mandatory for J&K revenue services; sparks row

SRINAGAR: J&K administration’s move to remove Urdu, previously a mandatory qualification for revenue services, from the newly amended draft recruitment rules has sparked a political row in the Union Territory. The decision comes nearly a year after BJP protested and sought revocation of a govt order that made Urdu a compulsory subject for the naib tehsildar recruitment exam in J&K.

PDP termed it a deliberate attempt to sideline and erase Urdu from the region’s administrative framework, even as BJP called it a “course correction”, insisting that any of the five official languages in J&K should be made a criterion for qualifying for revenue services.

For generations, Urdu been the backbone of revenue records, land documentation, and official communication in the UT, PDP president Mehbooba Mufti said. “Diluting its role is not only culturally insensitive but also administratively unsound. Removing Urdu from revenue services will create practical challenges in handling existing records and weaken the continuity of governance,” she said, adding that PDP views this decision as part of a broader pattern of undermining the linguistic and cultural identity of J&K.

“Urdu has not been removed. It has been removed as the sole mandatory language for qualification,” BJP general secretary Ashok Koul said, adding that since J&K has five official languages, candidates should have knowledge of any one to qualify, and land records should be made available in all official languages.

The row began after the revenue department on April 10 issued a draft of Jammu and Kashmir Revenue Service Recruitment Rules for non-gazetted posts, inviting objections within 15 days of the notification. According to the draft, the minimum qualification for direct recruitment has been kept as “graduation from any university”. Earlier, along with graduation, the knowledge of Urdu was a necessary criterion for recruitment.

National Conference has not commented on the issue.

Urdu has a long association with J&K. In 1889, Maharaja Pratap Singh, the third ruler of Dogra dynasty, replaced Persian with Urdu as the court language in the region. After 1947, the Constituent Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir recognised Urdu as a link language of the erstwhile J&K state, which included Ladakh, and retained it as an official language.

Over time, English gradually replaced Urdu in official communication, particularly after the extension of central services to the region in 1962. As IAS and IPS officers were posted in J&K, English increasingly became the preferred administrative language.

This arrangement remained in place until Sept 2, 2020, when the Union Cabinet approved the Jammu and Kashmir Official Languages Bill, 2020, declaring Urdu, Hindi, Kashmiri, Dogri and English as official languages of the region. The bill was later passed by voice vote in Rajya Sabha, effectively ending Urdu’s 131-year status as the sole official language in J&K. Experts say apart from J&K, no other region in the country has five official languages in use.
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