Omar puts in father’s Delhi job application: a tirade against Govt

Although the Centre has offered Farooq a Cabinet berth as an alternative, the angry CM is believed to have rejected it. And today, his son, Omar, underlined the unhappiness in the Abdullah family by lashing out at the Vajpayee Government.

In fact yesterday itself, in his Kashmir Vision 2020 speech, Farooq had equated New Delhi with Islamabad as Defence Minister George Fernandes heard him silently.

‘‘Pakistan is sending Al Qaeda and other foreign militants because they don’t trust us. New Delhi also does not trust us,’’ a bitter Farooq said. ‘‘Pakistan will even drop an atom bomb in Srinagar but New Delhi is also giving us painful moments,’’ he said.

Adding that he ‘‘he wants to cry’’ and ‘‘sometimes I feel like tearing off my clothes.’’ He even accused New Delhi of discrimination in Central government jobs against Kashmiri Muslims.

Today, it was time for his son and MoS External Affairs, Omar Abdullah, to come to his father’s aid. Which he did by raising the pitch and claiming that his father has been ‘‘used’’ during difficult times.

‘‘You can’t just expect him to take whatever is thrown at him. This man has been CM three times. He has kept the national flag flying high,’’ he said in a TV interview.

‘‘Whenever you needed him to go and defend your human rights record, even when human rights were at their worst in early ’90s…He went to Geneva, Vienna and the UN and did the best he could. Even the human rights record was not worth the paper it was written on,’’ he said.

Omar said that ‘‘to expect that the man will accept anything you throw at him like some sort of grateful dog waiting for some scrap is to add salt to the wounds you (Centre) have inflicted.’’

These harsh comments made by the Abdullah duo are loaded with meaning. Observers believe it to be a last-ditch effort by the ruling NC to ensure Farooq is ‘‘honourably’’ accommodated in Delhi.

Sources in the NC revealed that the party’s top leadership is frustrated because even the remote possibility of Chief Minister Farooq and his son working together is a political nightmare.

‘‘The two are poles apart in every sense. Their politics, styles of working and even temperaments are at variance with each other,’’ a senior NC leader said. ‘‘Once Omar is active in state politics, he will make life difficult for many of his father’s cronies.’’

The latest father-son remarks are bound to make things more difficult for the Centre in the run-up to the Kashmir polls. For one, they make Omar’s continuance as Minister of State for External Affairs that much more difficult. Secondly, they indicate that Abdullah family is bargaining for a better option for Farooq than a Cabinet berth if the Centre wants him out of J&K before the elections.

While neither of the Abdullahs has indicated to the Centre what would satisfy Farooq, those who know him feel that he may settle only for an Ambassadorial assignment to either London or Washington.

Even as the question of Farooq’s future remains unresolved, the Centre is continuing with its efforts to rope in separatist leaders into the poll process. The PMO’s point man for Kashmir affairs, A S Dulat, is believed to have met prominent separatist leader Shabir Shah who is in Delhi to get a feel of the Centre’s plans.

The meeting seems to have gone off well because today Shah told correspondents that he was ‘‘willing’’ to meet Prime Minister Vajpayee if an invitation was extended to him.

He took another step forward when he added that he was also not averse to joining a group of leaders who could provide a ‘‘logical’’ road map for the resolution of the Kashmir problem. Although he was reticent on the question of participating in the polls, he hinted that he was in favour of an alternative front to the Hurriyat.