‘Impractical’ ban on wedding extravagance remains confined to papers

By Hirra Azmat

Srinagar, May 10: The state government is not trying to enforce the order passed the last year to limit the expenditure on weddings.
The government had, through the order issued by the Food Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs department (FCS&CA), restrictions on the number of guests to be invited to a wedding or related functions, and also specified the number of dishes that could be served.
The move, aimed to curb the wastage of food mostly in the weddings, was initiated in response to complaints received by the department against the lavish weddings becoming common in the state.
The then-minister for FCS &CA, Chowdhary Zulfikar Ali, had described the wedding ceremonies as a “nuisance”.
“Now you can only invite 500 guests to a daughter’s wedding and 400 to a son’s. For the ring ceremonies, people can invite 100 guests,” he had said, explaining the order.
However, the order, which was supposed to come into effect from April 2017, has remained confined to papers.
Officials in the FCS &CA accept the failure of government in implementing the order.
“The government order has turned out to be a hoax. It is mainly because the order was issued without any preparations on ground,” an official told The Kashmir Monitor, wishing anonymity.
He said the implementation of the order was “practically impossible” in the valley.
“The previous ministry had issued the order in haste. It has been more than a year now, and I don’t see any implementation on the ground. The order will suffer the same treatment in the coming years as well,” the official said.
The incumbent Minister for FCS&CA, Ashraf Mir, expressed uncertainty over the implementation of the order.
The government had issued such bans in the past too. The order passed in October 2004 restricted the scale of hospitality, the preparation of dishes and the number of guests at weddings and related ceremonies.