Srinagar’s tree-lined Polo View, former home to the Kashmir Press Club that was the last bastion of resistance to the government’s iron-fist rule, received a glossy makeover on Friday.

The street has been transformed into what officials call the “first pedestrian-oriented shopping street” and “wire-free market” (with all the cables placed underground) in the Valley.

A Rs 5-crore investment, part of the ongoing Smart City Project, has given a gleaming new look to what was already a picturesque street in the lap of Chinars at the city centre.

“Many who look at it today will feel they are not in Srinagar but in Delhi or Mumbai. You will get to see more such markets in the coming days,” lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha told reporters while inaugurating the refurbished market.

However, a reporter, recalling the days when the street bustled with journalists before the Press Club was shut down in January 2022, described the facelift as “a glossy obituary to whatever limited press freedom we once had”.

Sinha said: “Polo View in the heart of Srinagar has been transformed into a pedestrian-oriented high street that will attract more footfall, increase in retail sale, improve the experience of visitors and make the area more livable.”

Srinagar municipal commissioner Aamir Athar Khan said that “universal access, separate underground sewerage and drainage networks, underground electricity and communication lines and façade improvement” were hallmarks of the new Polo View.

Pro-government netizens have flooded their social media accounts with pictures of the renovated market in support of the government’s “all is well” narrative for the Valley.

Kashmir will be hosting its maiden G20 meeting later this month, with a visit to the market expected to be part of the foreign delegates’ itinerary.

Lost in the pomp and show is the checkered history of Polo View’s struggle for press freedom.

The Press Club, which stood on Polo View along with scores of shops for high-end tourists, was the biggest representative body for the Valley’s journalists.

It was perhaps the only institution in the region to remain relatively unscathed during the crackdown on dissent following the scrapping of the erstwhile state’s special status in 2019.

However, after the government suspended itsregistration and shut itdown in January last year, several journalists were arrested and most others went into a shell for fear of being hounded.

“The facelift given to the street looks like a glossy obituary to whatever limited press freedom we once had,” a journalist taking in the street’s new look, alongside knots of tourists and onlookers, said.

“This place was like a second home to us. During those dark days (of the clampdown that followed the 2019 constitutional changes), we would come here daily to share our stories, although no Internet was available for months.”

The Press Club building has been handed over to the police. Outside the complex has come up a bike docking station, part of the “smart cycling” initiative of the Smart City Project.

The street’s dozen-odd shopkeepers have been suffering in silence since the government initiated the facelift last year.

“This place was in a mess all these months because of the construction. We hardly got any customers,” a shopkeeper said.

“We still have our fingers crossed as the government has converted the road, which acted as a parking space for vehicles, into a pedestrian street.”

Many localities in Srinagar’s city centre have suffered with the government rushing to complete the Smart City Project ahead of this month’s scheduled G20 meeting.

Polo View had been established in 1954 by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, who happened to be prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir at a time when the then state boasted that exalted title for its head of government.

Today, when it has been stripped of special status as well as statehood and has not even a chief minister, a lieutenant governor inaugurated its capital’s newly acquired symbol of lustre.