Patil reminds Omar of a bad film: Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot

The media had not been invited to cover Patil’s visit to the forward posts and this picture was taken by a photographer in the President’s entourage who then distributed it to the media.

Sources in the Army said that when discussing infiltration on the Line of Control (LoC), Patil asked officers about the “quantity of weapons” that militants carry with them. Army officers, sources said, told her that a militant “generally carried around 30 kg of weapons.” It was then that Patil asked about the weight of a Kalashnikov and, in reply, an officer handed it to her.

Abdullah puts his critique in context. “They say a picture speaks a thousand words and I’d have been thrilled to see a photograph of the President talking to kids, as a grandmother would, in some far flung hamlet about the promise of a better future rather then this reminder of the one object that has caused so much death and destruction over the last eighteen years,” he writes.

Abdullah’s blog, he told The Indian Express, is his personal reflection on what strikes him. And as it is an election year in J-K, Abdullah’s personal blog too has invited attention. His recent comment about the migration of Kashmiri Pandits, especially his assertion that the larger community did not do enough to prevent it, generated a lot of controversy.

“I will write whatever I feel like. This blog is a space for me to speak my heart out,” he told The Indian Express, “I never try to be politically correct while blogging.” His words have found an unusual echo in Hurriyat hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani: “The gun in the hands of President Pratibha Patil indicates that India is at war with the people of Kashmir.”