Jammu Tawi, June 19 -- Perched on a Jammu hills overlooking the Tawi Valley and a calm witness to the social and political life of Jammu and Kashmir for half a century, the legendary Hotel Jammu Ashok has formally been shut.

A Government of India subsidiary, India Tourism Development Corporation, the current owner of the hotel, has ceased the operations and put out the closure notice. The closure of Jammu Ashok is a part of the longer disinvestment policy of the central government which set out the process of pulling out of the hotel business under the Vajpayee regime twenty years ago.

The Ashok Hotel in Jammu was an offshoot of the legendary hotel of similar name set up in New Delhi in 1956 as a project conceived and patronised by firs...