HMT is stirring again. On Independence Day, queues stretched nearly two kilometres outside HMT’s Bengaluru outlet as buyers snapped up more than 2,000 limited-edition watches in hours; the Gandaberunda edition sold out first. Union Heavy Industries Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, who has pushed HMT’s revival since directing officials in June 2024 to submit a recovery proposal, is now citing this demand as proof the brand can be rebuilt. The question for Jammu and Kashmir is simple: does Srinagar have a seat at that table?
Zainakote’s claim rests on record, not sentiment. The Centre approved the project in June 1970. HMT Watch Factory III opened at Srinagar in 1975, built on know-how transferred from the Bangalore units. Parliamentary records show 47,761 watches assembled there in 1973-74 alone, in the factory’s first full year. Installed capacity later reached roughly 5 lakh mechanical watches annually, with output at its peak touching 8 lakh from a base of 2 lakh, and near 1,200 workers on the rolls before 1990. The site itself, reported at around 400 kanals, remains a physical asset the government still holds.
The decline is equally on record. Migration of skilled workers through the 1990s, mounting losses, and a market shift to quartz and imported watches gutted output. HMT Chinar Watches was spun off as a subsidiary in an attempt to isolate the unit; it did not survive. In 2017, the Centre approved closure of both HMT Watches and HMT Chinar Watches on grounds of chronic financial sickness. That closure order is still the operative fact on Zainakote today.
What has changed is the market, not the machinery. Mechanical, hand-wound watches now carry retro and collector value that quartz-era planners never anticipated. HMT says its watches have passed through more than 10 crore hands since 1961. Bengaluru’s Independence Day queue is evidence that this history still converts into footfall and sales when the product is positioned correctly.
None of this argues for restarting Zainakote as it operated in 1975. A 1,200-worker mass-production line has no place in this market. What fits is a smaller unit: limited-edition and heritage models, Kashmir-specific designs, assembly and finishing work, paired with a horology and precision-engineering training wing on the existing 400-kanal site.
The Omar Abdullah government has an opening it did not create but can use. Kumaraswamy is already directing HMT officials toward a Centre-backed revival plan. A concrete Zainakote proposal, costed and scoped, addressed to the Ministry of Heavy Industries, would test whether Delhi’s HMT revival is national in scope or confined to Bengaluru.
Independence Day answered whether HMT has a market. Whether Zainakote gets back into it is now a matter of who writes the proposal first.
