Srinagar: In the heart of the scenic Vale of Kashmir is Srinagar, the summer capital spread-eagled around the vast expanse of the blue waters of the river Jhelum. Connected with this are the Dal and the Nageen lakes, the kaleidoscope of colour with their beautiful houseboats, their shikaras (water gondolas) with their gay canopies, and of course, the idyllic gardens and natural surroundings.

The houseboat, Kashmir’s unique floating home, in its incarnation today is an innovation of the British. In 1927, Maharaja Hari Singh, the last Dogra ruler of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir under the British paramountcy enacted the hereditary state subject order which granted to the state subjects the right to government office and the right to land use and ownership and debarring the non-state subjects from acquiring immovable properties and government jobs.

As the new law prohibited land ownership in the state also by the foreigners, the Britishers took to living on water.

The ongoing debate on Constitutions Article 35A, which gives special rights to state subjects, has brought back focus on house boats and the 1927 order which played a role in their creation by the Kashmir-loving British.

The owners of ornate wooden floating homes are passing through most difficult period of all times. They fear that these icons of Kashmir’s once thriving tourism industry may soon exist only on postcards.

Most of the 800 plus houseboats sit empty on the lake’s placid, jade-hued waters, amid the lotus fields and floating gardens as the Valley is witnessing another bleak tourist season.

“When we talk about overall tourist inflow and the number of the visitors who choose to stay in houseboats, this has been another worse season,” said Muhammad Azim Tuman, a former chairman of the Houseboat Owners Association.

Houseboat owners also complain of harassment at the hands of the authorities. The lake and waterways development authority (Lawda), the department of tourism and the Srinagar Municipal Corporation together have made the repair and re-construction of the houseboats difficult because of long running pollution concerns. The Lawda had, sometime ago, even threatened to cancel the licenses of the houseboats in the belief that these are the main source of pollution of the Dal and Nageen.

More than a decade ago, the Lawda had ordered all houseboat owners to stop operation or face forced closings after the J&K high court barred people from operating houseboats and hotels on the lake. The court order came after a pollution control board report which found that sewage from the boats is a major source of pollution.

However, these claims were contested by the houseboat owners. They saw in “false propaganda” a conspiracy to kill the romance of Kashmir’s resplendent floating homes and blamed a section of bureaucracy and rivals in the tourist trade and other “vested interests” for it.

Mr Tuman said that official studies carried out in the past have found that houseboats are responsible only for three per cent of pollution in the Dal lake.

He said lakes in Anchar, Wullar and Manasbal which do not have houseboats are also suffering from pollution.

The state’s Lawda, which is being openly accused of turning a blind eye on the encroachments and other illegal activities in the Dal and Nageen area for varied reasons including corruption, nepotism and political interference in its work, says it is now taking a slew of measures to control pollution of the twin lakes. These include installing about 900 mini-sewage treatment units on houseboats.

“The process of installation of holding tanks and bio-digesters for 900 houseboats at a cumulative cost of Rs 15 crores will be completed by November 30,” a spokesman of the Lawda said.

J&K’s chief secretary B.V.R. Subrahmanyam said that the relocation of the Dal dwellers is also on and, for this purpose, a fresh socio-economic survey of covering as many as 58 hamlets within the lake area is being carried out by the revenue authorities.

The Lawda has also moved a proposal for increasing the capacity of sewage treatment plants (STP) around the Dal from the existing 36 mld to 50 mld “to ensure that no raw sewage from the catchments goes into the lake”.

The spokesman said, “We need Rs 111 crore for executing this plan. We’re also strengthening the drainage and STP network to prevent night soil of around 60,000 population presently going directly into the lake.”

The Lawda has promised that the macrophyte infestation including expansion of lily patches in open water expanse of the Dal will be cleared by the end of December.