Jammu and Kashmir lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha and his top officers on Monday faced uncomfortable questions over the government’s alleged bias for Amarnath Yatra at the expense of Muharram, triggering a heated argument at a high-profile meeting and prompting a senior Shia leader to walk out over purported humiliation.

Shia leader and former minister Imran Ansari said he walked out of the meeting headed by Sinha after chief secretary Arun Kumar accused him of airing sectarian views and the LG “dictated” him to sit down.

According to local belief, since the scrapping of special status to Jammu and Kashmir in 2019, the government has been devoting all its resources to the success of the Amarnath Yatra. The yatra takes precedence over all other issues during the two-month-long pilgrimage and the administration brazenly wears it on its sleeves, although there have been widespread complaints of harassment faced by locals because of excessive security measures.

Sinha was chairing a meeting to review the preparations for the Muharram, which marks the anniversary of the battle of Karbala where Prophet Mohammed’s grandson and other family members were killed.

Ansari is the second man in the hierarchy in the Sajad Lone-led People’s Conference that had in 2021 parted ways from the multi-party Gupkar Alliance, fighting for the restoration of Article 370. The party is seen as close to the BJP, making the allegation of Ansari all the more serious.

Ansari, whose father was also a minister and a senior cleric, said Sinha asked him how much support the community was getting from the government.

“I told him that the visits of some officers to Muharram functions were just for a photo opportunity. I told governor sahab that I have a complaint against you,” Ansari told the media after the walkout.

“I told him that you made no visit to any Muslim locality. I gave him the facts, telling him that he visited the Amarnath shrine six or seven times. I told the chief secretary, who was sitting there, that he too visited the Amarnath shrine five or six times. I told the same thing to police officers sitting there.”

Ansari said the chief secretary was deeply agitated by his remarks and accused him of giving a “different direction” to the meeting.

“I asked which direction? He said I was making sectarian remarks by saying they (the administration) were taking more interest in the Amarnath Yatra. I told him that it was a fact. I said we all want Amarnath Yatra to be successful but if they were taking so much interest in that, what about Muharram,” Ansari said.

Ansari claimed the LG was sitting silent when the chief secretary levelled the allegations of being sectarian against him.

“I told him that I won’t tolerate it and I do not want the word to go out that I was sectarian or that I have spoken about (against) a particular religion. At this, governor sahab (angrily) asked me to sit. It sounded like a dictation. I told him that we had come for something else and that I do not like the dictation. I walked out of the meeting.”

Ansari accused the government of humiliating him after having invited him to the meeting.

The Jammu & Kashmir government, in a statement, referred to the meeting but did not react to Ansari’s allegations.

“This (Muharram) is the occasion of utmost religious importance for all of us. The UT administration and the government of India are working with sensitivity and commitment to ensure that all arrangements are made for smooth, safe and hassle-free conduct of Muharram,” Sinha said.

The People’s Conference strongly condemned the behaviour of the administration in the meeting. A party spokesperson said the administration was setting a “dangerous precedent.”

“It started with the humiliation of political leaders, and now they are moving on into the domain of humiliating religious leaders,” the spokesperson said.

He said the UT is administered in a new “hybrid model” in which some bureaucrats have donned the hats of politicians.

“These politico-bureaucrat variants of the bureaucracy feel that it is their divine duty to humiliate the political class. We would like to remind those bureaucrats that they are mere tools in this ‘operation humiliation’. It is the central leadership that has imposed a selected group on the masses of Jammu and Kashmir and we are facing the brunt,” he added.

The People’s Conference challenged them to dare to do it in any other part of the country.

“This too will pass. But these hybrid entities will be held up in odium and contempt and will go down in history as molesters of the sacred institution of bureaucracy,” the spokesperson said.