Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has been served an eviction notice and offered alternate accommodation in the union territory. The PDP chief has been served an eviction notice and asked to reply within seven days as to why she cannot be asked to leave. A later update quoting sources indicated that she had been offered an alternate bungalow.
“Upon receiving unsatisfactory reply from Mehbooba Mufti, Estates Department will issue a final eviction notice and she was asked to leave Fairview Gupkar Bungalow,” officials confirmed.
Fair View had been the official residence of Mehbooba and her father, Mufti Muhammad Sayeed when they were Chief Ministers. However, the law that permitted former CM to occupy official residences for life was amended by the Centre in 2020.
Earlier in 2020, two former CMs of Jammu and Kashmir – Omar Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad – had left their official residences.
As Mufti’s father, late Muhammad Sayeed was the CM of J-K in 2005, she was living here since then, as unlike other states, J-K chief ministers were not obligated to vacate their government residence when their tenure ended or they were forced out of office.
Her former accommodation, Fairview residence was previously an interrogation centre called PAPA-II and it served as an official guest house till 1989. It was named so after the Border Security Force occupied it in 1990.
According to reports, this centre was used as a regular centre to conduct interrogations, until senior J-K bureaucrat Ashok Jaitly moved into it in 1996 and used it as his residence.
