Omar Abdullah interview: ‘How does getting into a fight (with L-G) from Day One help me address J&K voters’ concerns?’

IE: What was your first reaction to this mandate? What did it leave you with?

Omar Abdullah: Well, it leaves us a with a sense of, a lot of humility. This verdict, this mandate is humbling. But it also leaves us with a great sense of responsibility. To live up to the expectations. You don’t get a mandate like this without people expecting to see visible change. And that obviously becomes a huge responsibility for us.

Also, that responsibility will have to be fulfilled navigating uncharted waters. We are a Union Territory. This is the first time we will have a Union Territory elected government. This is the first time the Lieutenant Governor (L-G) is going to have to work with an elected government.

So there are so many firsts that we’re going to have to figure out how to understand. I mean, we need to understand what departments are ours. What powers are ours. What decisions we can take. How far we can push the line. So, we’ll figure it out.

IE: The Congress has been cornered on the Article 370 issue. Have any conversations on the common minimum programme (CMP) for the alliance government begun?

Omar Abdullah: None at the moment. Look, 370 is part of the National Conference’s political ideology. But we have always said that it’s not a battle that’s going to end tomorrow. We’ve always said that this is a fight that is going to extend to a change of government at the Centre. I’ve been very careful to tell people time and again that you can’t expect to get back what was taken, from the people who took it from us. So nobody, I don’t think anybody here is under this illusion. That we’re going to somehow be able to convince Modi sahab to return what was taken.

So this is something that we’re going to continue to talk about. We promise that we’ll keep the issue alive and that is what we are duty-bound to do.

But in the immediate instance, we need to do what we can with the current government. And I think on that, obviously, statehood becomes the most important thing.

IE: Is there any agenda point that would be uncompromising for you, in terms of what you would want on the CMP?

Omar Abdullah: None, I think. At the moment the Congress is going to have to figure out where it fits in terms of the coalition, ministers, stuff like that. So, we’ll figure that one out. We haven’t got that far. But, I mean, obviously, we’re going to look at that very closely. We didn’t have a CMP the last time we had a government, but then we sort of got a lot of criticism for that.

I’m also reluctant to use the word minimum. Because it’s like you’re selling yourself cheap. So, you have a common minimum programme, this is the very least that we’re going to do. It shouldn’t be a minimalist agenda. It should be a maximalist one.

We should aim to do as much as we can, not the very least that we can do. So, we’ll look at it from that point of view. I’m not going to use the word minimum. It’s going to be a roadmap for the maximum that we can do for J&K.

IE: How do you assess the mandate for the NC?

Omar Abdullah: I can’t but be sort of almost overawed by the fact that, I mean, look at our strike rate. I mean, 75% is not a joke. 42 out of 56 (seats the NC contested).
It’s a 75% strike rate. So, basically, I mean, it shows that where National Conference put up candidates, barring a few, we won those seats and we won them well.

IE: And the Congress, by comparison?

Omar Abdullah: Well, I think the Congress itself is going to be disappointed with its results. I mean, there’s no doubt about it.

IE: Over the last six years there’s been a sense of bureaucratic fatigue among the people. How are you hoping to address that with the limited powers that the government will have?

Omar Abdullah: Bureaucratic fatigue as it is, this is now an elected government. Those bureaucrats are accountable to an elected government. Yes, some of them will still owe their allegiance to Raj Bhawan, but I believe that this is a temporary phenomenon. Statehood has to be restored. And restored, we hope, at the earliest. So even otherwise, you will now have elected representatives in the areas. Bureaucrats will have to respond to them.

You can’t have a DC who will ignore an MLA. You can’t have an SP who will ignore an MLA. You can’t have tehsildars and others who will ignore MLAs. So people’s work will get done. Up until now, they just haven’t had a voice. These officers haven’t been willing to listen to anybody.

See the lines outside the Secretariat today. And wait for the government to form and then see how people will be there. That tells you how disconnected this government has been from the people they’re supposed to be serving.

IE: You’ve been saying that you don’t want an antagonistic relationship with the Centre. There is a sense though that this might become a tussle between the LG and the government like in Delhi. Do you have that apprehension?

Omar Abdullah: Look, I don’t want that. But it takes two hands to clap. We are not starting this innings with a view to getting into battles. We are honestly starting it with a view to having a good, healthy working relationship.

Now, I’m not for a moment saying that the National Conference will stop opposing the BJP. Or that we expect the BJP to stop opposing us. We will go at each other hammer and tongs. But I’m trying to draw a line between what the National Conference and the BJP do and what the J&K government and the Union government do. And if we can ensure that those lines don’t get blurred and that somehow we are able to work well together, it’ll be to mutual advantage of both. At the end of the day, if Jammu and Kashmir does well, the country has something to take credit for.

We are not a state. Small as we are in size, we box well above our weight in terms of our importance, in terms of how much we matter. Let me put it down as plainly as possible. Delhi is a revenue surplus territory. Jammu and Kashmir is a severely revenue deficit territory. How does getting into a fight (with L-G) from Day One help me address the concerns of the voters of Jammu and Kashmir? At the end of the day, the people here didn’t vote this alliance so that we just keep fighting. They don’t want us to surrender on important things. But they don’t want us to start fighting from Day One. And I don’t think we should be playing to the galleries.

IE: How will Jammu find representation in your government, given that it’s different mandates in the two regions?

Omar Abdullah: It’s a fact that we don’t have very many MLAs from the plains of Jammu. That said, I’ve made it very clear that the incoming government must be a government of all the people of Jammu and Kashmir. We are as much a government of the people who voted for the National Conference, as for the Congress, as for the BJP, as for people who didn’t vote.

Now, I mean, if I am not the government of the people of Jammu, by that same logic, I’m also not the government of the people of Srinagar who didn’t come out and vote. 30 per cent voted, 70 per cent didn’t. Should that 70 per cent be punished because they didn’t vote? By that same logic, the people of Jammu don’t deserve to be punished just because they didn’t vote for us. They deserve to be represented and they’ll get represented.