Multipurpose cinema halls open in Pulwama, Shopian

“We will build such multipurpose cinema halls in every district of Jammu and Kashmir soon,” he told reporters. While the halls opened on Sunday can seat 70 people, those coming up in the next phase will be 100-seaters.

The multipurpose halls are being established at district headquarters under the UT government’s Mission Youth programme in collaboration with district administrations, officials said. They said eight more such facilities will come up in the next phase: at Anantnag, Srinagar, Bandipore and Ganderbal in the Valley and Doda, Rajouri, Poonch and Kishtwar in the Jammu region.

Cinema halls in the Kashmir Valley have been shut since the late 1980s after militants told owners of these halls to close them down. The halls have since been converted into commercial establishments or hospitals.

In the late 1990s, efforts were made to reopen the cinemas, with three halls opening in Srinagar. One of them, Regal cinema, was shut after a militant attack on the first day of reopening, and the other two closed down a few years later because of poor response from the public.

Kashmir’s first-ever multiplex, with seating capacity of more than 500, is scheduled to be thrown open for the public in Srinagar on Tuesday.