Kashmir valley set to get its first multiplex

NEW DELHI: The last time a theatre in the Kashmir Valley screened a film was in 1999. It was a brief run of a few months. After a 21-year gap, the Jammu & Kashmir administration has given the go ahead to Kashmiri Pandit entrepreneur Vijay Dhar to set up the Valley’s first multiplex. “We had applied for permission from the Cantonment Board in 2018. We were asked to approach nine other agencies — public works department, fire and emergency, municipality, electrical works and so on.
Last week, we finally got approval from the district administration. The multiplex should be set up by March next year,” Vijay, son of DP Dhar, former J&K deputy home minister and the architect of India’s intervention in the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, told TOI.
The multiplex is coming up on two storeys of a five-storey 18,000square feet commercial building at Sonwar in Badami Bagh Cantonment. Srinagar administration officials said it will have two screens — one with a seating capacity of 200, the other 150. The eight single-screen film theatres in the Valley — Broadway (which Dhar owned), Regal, Firdous, Shah, Neelam, Palladium, Shiraz and Khayam — have been largely shut since 1990.
They opened briefly in 1999 for a few months but some have beenoccupied by security forces. “About 55% of Kashmir’s youth is under the age of 35. Why should they be deprived of entertainment people their age in other states or even Jammu have access to?
Let the Kashmiri youth hold their popcorn before a screen,” said Dhar, who brought the Delhi Public School franchise to Srinagar in 2003, the first to do so. “I am not worried about profitability. Or resistance.” Is Dhar worried about terror incidents? “All that has to be fought and done by a Kashmiri. I am a proud Kashmiri. I have lived and loved here.”