No problem with Centre, except on statehood, but L-G interfering: Omar Abdullah

Referring to Sinha, he said, “In spite of the fact that he has on numerous occasions publicly said that he is only responsible for security, and law and order, and everything else is the domain of the elected government, that has not been translated on the ground. I can name institutions that should ordinarily have transferred to the elected government that haven’t so far,” he said.

Responding to questions on a range of other issues as well, Abdullah sought to make a distinction between the Opposition finding fault with voting machines, which he was not in favour of, and the functioning of the Election Commission where, he said, “we have a problem”.

The National Conference leader also described as “deeply distressing” the incident last week of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar pulling the hijab from a student’s face at a felicitation function.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah in conversation with The Indian Express National Opinion Editor Vandita Mishra at the Express Adda in New Delhi on Wednesday. (Express photo by Renuka Puri)

Asked about the relationship between his government and the Centre, Abdullah said, “Other than a couple of major issues on which, obviously, we haven’t made as much progress as I would have liked, particularly on the restoration of statehood and pending that our business rules being approved, the Government of India has been sort of well disposed towards the government of Jammu & Kashmir.”

While referring to the L-G, however, he pointed to how Sinha was chairman of the J&K State Power Development Corporation (JKSPDC) and chancellor of state universities, while chairing cultural academies and convening meetings on tourism.

“I am the Power Minister. It (JKSPDC) is a corporation that is part of the ministry but the L-G is the chairman of that corporation, (which he) shouldn’t be… I was chairman of that corporation when I was Chief Minister (in the previous stint),” Abdullah said.

“We have two universities (Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University and Islamic University of Science and Technology) and their statutes meant that the Chief Minister was chancellor… After the elections, these universities should have been transferred to the elected government. They haven’t,” he said.

“He (Sinha) is chairman of the cultural academy even though the culture department is with the elected government… I am the Tourism Minister but he continues to hold on even to tourism development authorities.. Somebody who says he is only responsible for security and law and order, what business does he have holding a tourism development authority, it is essentially interfering in the role of the elected government,” Abdullah said.

However, the J&K CM said that despite his issues with the L-G, the Central government’s conduct has left him “with limited scope to complain”. “They gave more money to my government at the end of last year than was actually part of the budget. And I have every hope and expectation that the same thing will be done this year as well,” he said.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah in conversation with The Indian Express National Opinion Editor Vandita Mishra at the Express Adda in New Delhi on Wednesday. (Express photo by Renuka Puri)

And yet, the main issue of statehood remained “a matter of disappointment”, he said. “We keep being told that (it will happen) at the appropriate time but nobody tells us how they will assess what the appropriate time is and tell us what the goalpost is. Tell us what we have to do to bring J&K to the point where you can say that yes this is the appropriate time… be honest with us,” Abdullah said.

Asked about the lack of minority representation in the NDA and its impact on pluralism in the country, Abdullah cited the recent incident involving Bihar CM Nitish Kumar. “All of us should worry about what these sort of things mean in India where an elected chief minister can pull off the face-covering of a young woman on a whim and not face any blowback. It is deeply distressing… The fact that an entire population feels disempowered because they have no representation at all in the treasury benches, much less in the government of India is something that concerns us,” he said.

Acknowledging that radicalisation was also a reality in certain quarters, Abdullah said, “We saw it play out in the (Red Fort) blast in Delhi. But to have a hyper nationalist agenda in the rest of the country, you can’t expect that there will be a complete absence of any sort of reaction to that. There is a reaction and that manifests itself in an element of radicalisation among the section of the population,” he said.

On the Opposition’s allegations of “vote chori”, he said, “If by vote chori, you’re going to allege that the machines are fiddled with, I have never been a supporter of that. And that actually puts me in a very awkward position at home because my father is a vehement believer in the machine-chori here. Every time we lose an election, it’s always the machine’s fault. My belief is a little different. I believe that we should own the defeat and then work towards correcting it,” he said.

However, Abdullah said, if vote theft means “tinkering around with the election process, messing around with voter lists, messing around with boundaries of constituencies, then yes, we have a problem. For example, the delimitation exercise in Jammu-Kashmir before the assembly elections was clearly done with a view to benefiting one political party, the BJP,” he said.

Responding to another query on whether restoration of special status to J&K could return to the talks table, he said, “Why not? Things change, situations change, moods change. It will require a change of government in the Centre. It will require a government that is better disposed towards us than the current one,” he said.

On a personal note, Abdullah spoke about his distress at being called Chief Minister of the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir. “I find it very difficult to use the words Union Territory and Jammu-Kashmir in the same sentence. In fact, if anything I hate being reminded that we are a Union Territory,” he said.

The Express Adda was moderated by Vandita Mishra, National Opinion Editor, The Indian Express.