As Valley celebrates a year of calm,CM Omar is Adda guest in Mumbai

There is no better time for Mumbai to pitch questions to the 42-year-old Chief Minister,who manages a state which is always an “incident” away from sliding to protests and the cycle of killings—tourists are back in the Valley in record numbers and 2011 has been one of the calmest years in the Valley in two decades.

Omar Abdullah belongs to the first political family of Kashmir. In fact,the story of the Abdullahs,the National Conference and Kashmir have been intertwined for around a century now. The Abdullahs have literally occupied the centrestage of every political discourse on Kashmir ever since the country’s Independence.

When Omar Abdullah took over the reigns of the state on January,5,2009,he became the youngest chief minister of J&K—and the face of hope and political engagement with a troubled landscape. A two-minute extempore speech in Parliament had brought the former minister in the Atal Behari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government into national limelight and YouTube fame.

The young politician,who uses Twitter to often tell the world what he thinks,will interact with thought leaders from business,entertainment and media and will talk about Kashmir—and how he plans to make a permanent deal with peace in the Valley.