The Jammu and Kashmir government has completed the takeover of a number of schools connected, either directly or indirectly, to the outlawed group Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) and its affiliated organisation Falah-e-Aam Trust (FAT) in a major administrative action. 215 institutions associated with Jamaat were laid hold of in the first phase. On 18th April (Saturday), 58 private schools met with the same fate because they fell “under patronage of the trust or within its ideological orbit.”
According to reports, multiple such schools had been found in places like Kultoora and Pohrupeth in the Handwara sub-division’s Langate belt in north Kashmir. The official transfer of these institutions to the civil administration was facilitated by the police. The officials informed that there was no interruption to continuing operations during the seamless transition process, which included securing school property and transferring administrative responsibility.
The goal of the action is to restructure management in compliance with government regulations while ensuring continuity in education. Local authorities are going to take additional steps to regularise the workings of these schools, such as staff deployment, curriculum alignment, and administrative reorganisation in line with official norms.
Islamia High School in Baramulla is one of the institutions linked to the proscribed entities. After the action, Government High School in Buglowbagh presently exercises administrative authority over it following a clubbing of 7 additional institutions.
A watchlist of such schools was compiled by the intelligence agencies, and such an institution cannot be registered with the government. The drive started in 2022 when the government assumed administrative control of the 22 original FAT schools, pointing to a crackdown on the trust in 1990. The government seized control of a further 150 of these institutions in August 2025.
In 2019, the centre outlawed the Jamaat as an illegal group. The Falah-e-Aam Trust, created by JeI in 1972, was prohibited from performing its activities in 2022 by the LG administration, which also ordered deputy commissioners to close it. The radical organisation began with 22 schools in 1967 when the region had government-run institutions and a few missionary schools in the private sector. It also opened schools in the Jammu region’s Muslim-majority areas.
Notably, the National Conference government of Sheikh Abdullah banned the JeI in 1975; however, he asked them to build a trust to run their schools. Interestingly, the ban was removed after 2 years. The JeI was prohibited once more in the 1990s when terrorism spiked in the valley. The 22 schools intimately attached to FAT were ordered to shut down as part of the mission.
The trust gave local management committees control over the majority of its schools following the move. However, it received relief later. The JeI was ultimately barred in 2019, prior to the revocation of Article 370, with police and magistrates sending notifications to these schools.
