Telegraph India: Anarch is the Kashmir monarch - Geelani opens and shuts Valley at will by Sankarshan Thakur

NEW NORMAL: This is how Srinagar’s central vista and tourist hub, Residency Road, has looked for the last three months. Picture by Sankarshan Thakur

Srinagar, Oct. 13: There is a government here, we are told on good authority. There is a counter-government, that is authority itself. Kashmir, not for the first time, lies plunged in the drifts of a surreal slipstream. Its rulers can't rule, the law is unable to enforce order. It's probably fair to speculate there exists an elected dispensation; but the dispensing is all done by those who dare it.

The Establishment does still have the throne, but it's strapped to it; the anarch is monarch, possessed of both writ and rein.
Chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, 57, lives off a bespoke bungalow in Srinagar's best protected district, holds constitutional office and all the powers that reside with the state.

Arch secessionist Syed Ali Shah Geelani, 87, sits shackled at home in a peripheral neighbourhood, wields prolonged defiance of the Constitution and all the power nobody ever licensed him to.

Read the full article at Telegraphindia