Urdu, Recruitment Rules, And A Video of Separatist Leader Geelani: Why Iltija Mufti Faces an FIR

An FIR against People’s Democratic Party (PDP) leader Iltija Mufti over a social media post has brought into sharp focus a familiar faultline in Jammu and Kashmir: the politics of language, layered with questions of identity, administration, and now, legality.

The case, registered by Cyber Police Kashmir, centres on Mufti sharing an old video of separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani, in which he speaks about the importance of learning Urdu. The post came at a politically sensitive moment, amid a fresh controversy over proposed changes to recruitment rules in the revenue department that could remove Urdu as a mandatory qualification.

Police have framed the action in national security terms. In an official statement, they said the circulation of such videos amounted to a “deliberate attempt to propagate separatist and secessionist narratives” and could disturb public order. The FIR invokes multiple provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and has been registered at the Cyber Police Station in Srinagar.

Mufti, however, had explicitly distanced herself from Geelani’s politics while sharing the video, writing that she did not agree with his ideology but found his emphasis on Urdu relevant.

The controversy over Urdu predates the FIR. Earlier this month, the government invited objections to draft revenue rules proposing to drop Urdu as a recruitment requirement—triggering political pushback. Urdu has historically functioned as the working language of land and revenue records in the region, making proficiency more than symbolic.

Last year, a similar flashpoint emerged when the BJP opposed a recruitment notification for naib tehsildar posts that required Urdu, a move that eventually landed before the Central Administrative Tribunal.

The ruling National Conference has sought to defuse the issue. Adviser to Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, Nasir Aslam Wani, described the draft rules as part of a “democratic process” of consultation, while party spokesperson Imran Nabi Dar insisted no final decision has been taken.

Earlier, while addressing a press conference over the issue of dropping Urdu as a requirement for revenue jobs, Iltija also questioned the role of the chief minister, Omar Abdullah, stating that he had also previously, in his stint as the CM in 2015, stressed that the digitisation of revenue records would be carried out only in English.  She said that the government was implementing a Haryana model of “English being imposed on the revenue department despite the fact that all our documents are in Urdu.”

For the PDP, the FIR reinforces a broader political argument. Senior leader Nayeem Akhtar described the move as both exclusionary and excessive, arguing that sharing a video about language cannot be equated with promoting separatism.

What the episode ultimately reveals is less about a single social media post and more about how language, particularly Urdu, continues to sit at the intersection of governance and identity in Jammu and Kashmir, where even administrative changes can quickly acquire political charge.