Only Kashmir
Only Kashmir, published online as Onlykashmir.in, is an English-language digital news portal based in Srinagar's Press Enclave, covering Kashmir politics and current affairs. Operating under the banner Only Kashmir — Behind the News, the portal is run from the Kashmir Valley and New Delhi simultaneously, and publishes a continuous news-desk output on government, politics, health, tourism, culture and everyday life in Jammu and Kashmir, alongside national and international stories of interest to its readers.
The portal is one of the generation of Srinagar-based online outlets that grew up alongside social media distribution in the Valley. It is formally registered: the site states that Onlykashmir.in is registered with government under District Magistrate's number DMS/JUD/NOC/PUB/1143/20 and registration number 1525430463 under the Jammu and Kashmir State Emblem Act framework cited on the site, and it gives its office address as Abi Guzar, Lal Chowk, Press Enclave, Srinagar-190001.
Base in Srinagar's Press Enclave
Press Enclave, on Residency Road near Lal Chowk in central Srinagar, is the traditional home of Kashmir's newspaper and news-agency offices, and Only Kashmir's presence there places it physically inside the Valley's established media quarter. The portal publishes its full contact details on its pages: the Abi Guzar, Lal Chowk, Press Enclave address, a post box at GPO Srinagar, the landline number 0194-2455786 and the editorial email address onlykashmireditor@gmail.com. Its contact page names its chief editor and directs correspondence to that Srinagar office.
Operating from both the Valley and New Delhi, as its About description notes, gives a small portal two vantage points: reporters and sources close to Srinagar's administration, assembly, hospitals, universities and civic life, and a capital-city position for national political developments that affect Jammu and Kashmir. Much of its output is bylined simply to the Onlykashmir.in News Desk, in the datelined agency style familiar to Kashmiri journalism, with Srinagar at the head of most local stories.
Editor and Leadership
Only Kashmir is edited by Bilal Bashir Bhat, identified across the site and in contemporary reports as its editor and editor-in-chief, and named on its contact page as chief editor. Bhat is the portal's public editorial figure: his author archives on the site run to multiple pages of news reports, features and commentary over many years, including cultural pieces such as a remembrance of Srinagar walnut woodcarving artist Abdul Ahad Muran, and his byline appears on major Valley stories reported for the portal.
Bhat's work with Only Kashmir has been recognised outside the portal. In September 2013, at a World Peace Day programme at Samad's Island of Peace at Nigeen, Srinagar, he was presented with a certificate of excellence in journalism, on an occasion that also honoured other Srinagar editors. In October 2017, he and fellow journalist Rameez Makhdoomi were selected for a Global Media Fellowship in Turkey run by the Sinan Foundation, chosen, as the Jammu and Kashmir information minister Chowdhary Zulfkar Ali noted in congratulating them, from among thousands of journalists worldwide, with thirty-one countries participating. The Department of Information and Public Relations of Jammu and Kashmir also publicly felicitated both journalists for the fellowship and the international media achievement certificate that went with it.
Registration and Public Identity
Small digital outlets in Jammu and Kashmir operate in a closely regulated media environment, and Only Kashmir displays its registration details at the foot of its pages as part of its public identity. Quoting the District Magistrate's no-objection reference and its registration number on every page is a signal to readers, officials and advertisers that the portal is a registered publication rather than an anonymous social-media page — a distinction that matters in a region where large numbers of unbranded news pages circulate on Facebook and messaging platforms.
The portal also maintains a WhatsApp channel invitation on its stories, reflecting how distribution in Kashmir now works: a registered website at the centre, with social and messaging channels carrying headlines and links to readers who may rarely type a web address directly.
News Coverage: Government and Politics
Politics and administration form the core of Only Kashmir's news desk output. Its Srinagar-datelined reports cover the Jammu and Kashmir government, the legislative assembly, political parties and senior officialdom in detail. Recent coverage has included a major police reshuffle in which the Home Department transferred and posted one hundred IPS and JKPS officers, reported with the government order number, date and the individual postings of senior officers; assembly politics, including the debate over a resolution to restore statehood to Jammu and Kashmir and an unusual intervention by senior officials ahead of that debate; and statements and campaigns by parties, advisors to the chief minister and civil-society organisations.
That breadth — from service matters such as postings and transfers, which are of intense practical interest in the Union Territory, to constitutional questions such as statehood and official-language status — is characteristic of Kashmiri news portals, whose readership includes government employees, political workers, students and traders following decisions taken in Srinagar and New Delhi that directly shape local life.
Health, Tourism and Public Services
Beyond politics, Only Kashmir carries a substantial public-service and development file. Its health coverage has included hospital announcements in Srinagar, such as joint replacement surgery becoming available under the Ayushman Bharat health scheme, reported with the eligibility and access details a patient would need. Its public-institution coverage has included India Post's National Postal Week in Kashmir, reported from the Srinagar GPO with detail on postal banking, savings accounts, digital services and last-mile delivery to remote areas including Gurez, Machil and Zanskar.
Tourism, the Valley's signature industry, is another standing beat. The portal has covered the Kashmir Marathon, organised by the Department of Tourism and listed on the calendar of the Association of International Marathons and Distance Races, in depth — its route past Dal Lake, the Zabarwan range and the Mughal Gardens, its entry categories and fees, and the government's use of the event to promote sports tourism — and reported the chief minister's advisor promoting the marathon and Kashmir tourism at a travel fair in Hyderabad. Stories like these show the portal serving both a local audience that hosts such events and a promotional information chain aimed at visitors.
Features, Culture and Commentary
Only Kashmir is not only a wire-style news desk. Its sections include feature and spotlight writing, and its archive under the Behind the News banner carries essays and commentary on Kashmiri society, including pieces marking occasions such as the International Day of the Girl Child in a Kashmiri context. Bhat's own feature writing, on subjects from traditional crafts to festivals in the Valley, gives the portal a softer register alongside its hard news.
Cultural coverage matters to the portal's identity because so much external reporting on Kashmir is confined to politics and security. A Srinagar portal that also records woodcarvers, literary figures, sporting events and community campaigns presents the Valley, to its own residents and to outside readers, as a place with a continuing cultural and civic life, not only a dateline for conflict stories.
Reporting Style and Sources
The portal's news stories follow the conventions of Kashmiri English-language journalism: a place dateline, attribution to officials, departments and organisations, and detailed reproduction of orders, statements and figures. Its reports quote chief postmasters, hospital directors, party spokespersons and government advisors by name, and set local developments in their policy context — for example, explaining the background to the demand for official-language status for Punjabi by reference to the Jammu and Kashmir Official Languages Act, 2020 and the five languages it recognises.
Stories carry post-view counts and are organised into sections such as State, Feature and Spotlight, with author archives that allow a reader to follow an individual reporter's work. The overall effect is of a conventional, bylined newsroom product delivered in a digital-only format.
Audience and Reach
Only Kashmir addresses, first, readers in Jammu and Kashmir who follow Union Territory politics and services in English, and, second, the wider audience — in the rest of India and in the Kashmiri diaspora — that searches for Kashmir news online. Web-directory estimates have put the site in the range of roughly fifteen thousand visits a month, a modest but typical figure for an independent regional portal, with social-media reactions to its stories led by Twitter, now X. In practice, as with most outlets of its size, a large share of its readership arrives story by story, through search and social sharing, rather than through the homepage.
For that audience, the portal's longevity and registration are part of its offer. It has published continuously through a period in which Kashmiri media has faced closures, restrictions and rapid change, and its archive stretches back across more than a decade of Valley news, from the 2013 peace-day honours and the Tosa Maidan festival reporting of 2018 to the assembly and administrative coverage of the present day.
Place in Kashmir's Online Media
Srinagar's digital media landscape includes the online editions of established dailies such as Greater Kashmir and Rising Kashmir, news agencies, and independent portals such as Only Kashmir. Within that landscape, the portal's niche is the registered, editor-led news desk: small enough to be personal, with a named editor whose career and recognition are part of the record, and structured enough to cover government orders, hospital schemes, postal services and marathon routes with the same datelined thoroughness.
Only Kashmir's own banner promises reporting from behind the news. Its published record — a Press Enclave address, a government registration, an editor felicitated for international fellowship selection, and a daily file of Srinagar-datelined politics, health, tourism and cultural coverage — is the substance behind that promise, and the basis on which it continues to serve readers following Jammu and Kashmir.
