Srinagar: A group of citizens from Jammu and Kashmir on Friday appealed to the government to revisit the recently passed amendments to the Ease of Doing Business Act.
The amendments, passed in the recent autumn session of the J&K Legislative Assembly, replace permission-based control with rule-based governance. This change enables citizens and enterprises to plan, invest, and work with confidence, fostering Ease of Doing Business and Ease of Living in a manner that generates employment, attracts investment, and sustains long-term economic growth in the Union Territory of J-K.
Speaking to reporters here, Khursheed Ahmad Ganai, chairman of the Group of Concerned Citizens (GCC), said the Act is not practical, has several “deficiencies”, and should be revisited.
“The Ease of Doing Business Act 2026 of Jammu and Kashmir has several deficiencies. First, it professes objectives of ease of living and ease of doing business. Now, let us say for ease of doing business, this Act has been made, but ease of living is just not possible to be achieved with this kind of an Act,” Ganai said.
He said any law that makes “living difficult” for one crore forty lakh people and makes business easy for a “small section” of people, “is not a good law at all”.
“I can tell you that even responsible business people will not like this law, because it is almost making business free for all; anybody can do anything. The developmental controls, the overall rest of the laws which are there in this state have been almost nullified,” he said.
Ganai said the law “needs to be revisited”.
“It has to be done again, and it has to be overhauled in a very substantial way,” he said. He appealed to the government to review the Act again and “to seriously consider amending this law”.
Ganai said the Act could turn the entire UT into a concrete jungle “because all this facilitation of setting up enterprises is available for the entire UT”.
“We have little land, very little land for agriculture, horticulture. We have difficult topography. The available plain area, let us talk about the valley, is two hundred miles by fifty miles. With this limited plain area in the valley and the hilly and mountainous nature of our UT, we face a very difficult situation.
“This law is not doable; it is not practicable. If it is made practicable, it will create a lot of problems for the common people of Jammu and Kashmir,” the retired bureaucrat said.
The GCC said it supports genuine Ease of Doing Business (EoDB), simpler procedures, less duplication, digital processing, single-window clearances, time-bound decisions, and predictable regulation.
The EoDB should remove procedural friction; it should not remove substantive planning safeguards, it said.
