Police have registered an FIR after former chief minister, Mehooba Mufti's daughter, Iltija Mufti, and some social media users circulated a video of deceased separatist leader, Syed Ali Geelani, urging people to learn Urdu.
Iltija shared the video as she came down heavily on Chief Minister Omar Abdullah for pressing ahead with the policy to abolish the mandatory requirement of proficiency in Urdu for recruitments in the revenue department.
The government has, however, clarified that it has only circulated a draft amendment for inviting objections to the rules for change in language eligibility
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.”
Former Minister and PDP leader, Nayeem Akhtar, however, says that the circulation of the draft was the intent of the government to change recruitment rules and to deprive people with knowledge of Urdu from competing for the revenue services.
“This is the weakest government that we have. Entire chapter on NC founder Shiekh Mohammad Abdullah has been removed from school textbooks and the government has not been able to do anything,” he adds.
About the case against Iltija Mufti, he, however, says that the video was not promoting any separatist thought. " It was only the video about the need to learn Urdu, and Iltija ji has also clarified that she doesn't subscribe to the ideology of the deceased separatist leader."
