Srinagar, Jan 31: The J&K administration Tuesday said it recovered around 40 kanals of state land that was part of the historic Nedou’s Srinagar hotel that belongs to the maternal uncles of former Chief Minister and National Conference patron Farooq Abdullah.
The recovery is part of the ongoing drive against the alleged land grabbing including by those who once were among the top echelons of power in J&K.
Officials of the state revenue department arrived at the spot to identify the land and issue directions to their team. They were confronted by Farooq Abdullah’s nephew Muzaffar Shah, who heads of Awami National Conference. Speaking to media at the site on the occasion, Mr Shah said that the entire area of over 180 kanals (1 kanal is equivalent to one-eighth of an acre) belongs to Nedoe’s. As per the concerned Tehsildar, 40 of the 153 kanals of the total land on which the hotel is built is state land.
History of the Nedou’s in Kashmir:
The Nedou’s Hotel chain was founded by Michael Adam Nedou, an Englishman and architect by profession who had traveled to India from the port city of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) to construct a palace for the erstwhile Maharaja Of Gujarat. Michael built his first hotel in Lahore in 1880. It was his dream to expand his hotel chain into the picturesque valley of Kashmir.
Michael fell in love with Mirjan a tribal girl in Kashmir and later settled here. In 1933, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah married Akbar Jahan, the daughter of Michael Harry Nedou, the eldest son of Michael Adam Nedou. Nedou’s have been the pioneers of the hospitality sector in Kashmir. They ran two properties in the Valley, one in Srinagar and the other in the Gulmarg ski resort. Both of them were built around 1888.
Gulmarg property has remained functional while the Srinagar property remained closed since the beginning of violence in the Himalayan state in 1988-89. The heritage hotel property was used as barracks by the CRPF for some years during the peak of violence in the 1990s. The property was taken over on a long lease by ITC last year who planned to set up a 114-room five-star hotel with 25 deluxe rooms to revive the heritage property spread over nearly 10 acres.
