Gulmarg’s golden slopes, POK’s empty pitches

New Delhi: Jammu & Kashmir has more than ₹650 crore of sports projects underway this year and hosts national championships on its ski slopes. Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) spends less than 10 US cents a year on each resident’s sport, and its flagship cricket league collapsed amid unpaid bills.

On the slopes of Gulmarg in February 2026, Zubair Ahmad Lone, a snowboarder from Jammu & Kashmir, won gold in the snowboarding giant slalom at the sixth Khelo India Winter Games. More than 300 athletes from across India had travelled to the resort to compete in alpine skiing, Nordic skiing and snowboarding. A local rider taking gold on home snow showed how far Jammu & Kashmir’s sporting ambitions have come.

Across the Line of Control, the best-known sporting brand of POK ended in legal notices and unpaid umpires.

A winter-sports capital

Gulmarg has made the Khelo India Winter Games its own. The Games opened in March 2020 with 1,123 athletes across 13 disciplines, and Jammu & Kashmir topped the medal table. The 2021 edition drew 1,208 athletes, and Jammu & Kashmir won 18 golds. In 2023, 1,395 athletes took part, and the home team collected 26 golds, 25 silvers and 25 bronzes.

The ambition reaches well beyond the snow. In 2025, Jammu & Kashmir set aside ₹4.5 crore to host national and international events, including the Rafting World Cup, and planned national centres of excellence for water sports on Dal Lake and at Basohli. The second Kashmir Marathon in 2025 drew more than 3,000 registrations from 27 states and Union territories and 11 countries.

Millions on the field, hundreds on the podium

Jammu & Kashmir has turned sport into a mass movement. More than 61 lakh young people took part in organized sport in a single year. The Union territory has 100 sanctioned Khelo India centres, 92 of them already running, and nine academies that train young athletes in cricket, football, hockey, gymnastics, judo, wushu, volleyball, table tennis and water sports.

Its athletes won 639 national medals in 2024-25, including 239 golds, and 15 international medals. In 2023-24, Jammu & Kashmir hosted 15 national events across 13 disciplines.

Building the arenas

The building programme covers every corner of the Union territory. In 2026-27, its sports departments have 578 projects worth more than ₹650 crore underway across all 20 districts. They include 108 village playfields, synthetic football and hockey turfs at five sites, athletics tracks at Khour, Mendhar and Tulibal, six new stadiums and four cricket academies. Engineers are also building an Olympic-standard swimming facility at Gindun Rajbagh in Srinagar and two sports academies in border areas.

The next phase is already planned. Jammu & Kashmir seeks ₹1,000-1,200 crore from the Khelo India programme for 2026-31, aims to multiply the number of athletes it supports tenfold and has enlisted NIT Srinagar and IIT Jammu to bring sports science to its training.

POK: pennies for players

In 2024-25, the POK government set aside Rs 116 million for sports, youth and culture combined, or 0.41 per cent of its development programme. Spread across 4.39 million residents, that comes to about Rs 26 a head, less than 10 US cents. Jammu & Kashmir’s projects this year work out at about ₹470 for each of its 1.39 crore residents. POK’s official statistical yearbook does not record its stadiums or playgrounds.

A league that collapsed

POK’s main sporting venture fell apart within two seasons. The Kashmir Premier League staged its 2021 and 2022 seasons at a single ground in Muzaffarabad. The 2022 final never finished, and the league awarded the title without a result. The league seized control of one franchise over unpaid dues and removed the owners of another after they failed to pay their players. In January 2023, it sent a legal notice to its title sponsor seeking Rs 137 million, and said it owed players Rs 90 million, which it could pay only once the sponsor settled.

Match officials waited too. By May 2023, umpires, including International Cricket Council panel members Aleem Dar and Ahsan Raza, were still chasing about Rs 3 million in fees for the second season. No third season has followed.

Jammu & Kashmir builds turfs, tracks and academies in every district, hosts national championships and sends its athletes to the podium in the hundreds. POK spends little on its youth, does not record its playing fields and has seen its flagship league collapse amid unpaid bills. On Gulmarg’s slopes, young Kashmiris chase gold. Across the Line of Control, their counterparts still wait for somewhere to play.