Arfeen Wani:
So the Jammu and Kashmir government is preparing a shiny New Media Policy 2026. Registration for online news platforms. District lists of unregistered handles. Monitoring of fake news, plagiarism, and “unethical or anti-national activities.” De-empanelment threats and the possible withholding of government ads. All the usual bureaucratic armour, polished and ready.
But here’s the deliciously awkward question no one in the Assembly seems eager to answer out loud: does this mean every nuisance element with decent viewership will simply get empanelled?
If the metric is reach, then congratulations. Baber Shaar and Fayaz Secarpio are already halfway to becoming the new online aristocracy. One has the numbers, the other has the bravado. Both know how to keep the algorithm smiling. Under a policy that prioritises formal registration and accountability, what stops a sufficiently popular digital firebrand from walking into the Information Department, filling the forms, and walking out with official recognition? Empanelment, after all, has historically been the golden ticket to legitimacy, access, and sometimes even advertising revenue.
The satire writes itself. Imagine the scene a few months from now: the same people who once thrived on unfiltered outrage and selective storytelling now sit in the same meetings as accredited journalists, receiving the same official WhatsApp groups, the same press releases, the same carefully worded briefings. The line between “nuisance” and “stakeholder” dissolves the moment the follower count crosses an invisible threshold. Viewership, it turns out, may become the new press card.
This is not an argument against regulation. The Valley has seen enough of unaccountable digital noise. Misinformation travels faster than facts, and the damage is real. The government’s concern is understandable. The Social Media Cell of DIPR already issues real-time rebuttals. The JK4C exists to tackle cybercrime. Existing laws under the IT Act, BNS and BNSS are on the books. The policy is trying to close a genuine gap.
Yet the political soil of Kashmir remains delicate. The security situation has improved. Tourists return, businesses reopen, and daily life has regained a measure of normalcy that once felt impossible. These gains are hard-won and still reversible. In a place where trust is thin and memory is long, any new framework that decides who may speak with official sanction and who may not carries weight far beyond administrative convenience.
That is why the government must think a thousand times before this becomes law. Registration sounds neutral. Empanelment sounds orderly. But in practice, both can become instruments that reward the loudest rather than the most responsible. If the policy ends up legitimising the very voices that thrive on polarisation simply because they command attention, the cure may prove more complicated than the disease.
The House Committee has given the Information Department four months. Four months is enough time to ask the harder questions. Will registration require more than a form and a following? Will there be clear, transparent criteria that distinguish journalism from performance? Will the same standards apply to political party pages and self-styled mobile journalists alike? And will the fragile equilibrium of the Valley be factored into every clause?
Satire aside, the danger is not regulation itself. The danger is regulation that mistakes popularity for credibility. In a place still recovering its balance, that mistake could prove costly. The government would do well to remember: once the door of empanelment opens wide enough for every high-viewership nuisance, closing it again will be far harder than opening it.
