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Journalism of Courage
Omar Abdullah is clearly not going the Arvind Kejriwal way. Going by the early indications from Srinagar even before he gets sworn in as the first Chief Minister of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar, unlike the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief, has decided to move with caution and realism.
“How does getting into a fight (with L-G) from Day One help me address the concerns of the voters of Jammu and Kashmir?” the National Conference (NC) vice-president and former CM of the erstwhile state told The Indian Express in an interview days after the NC emerged as the single-largest party in the J&K Assembly elections with 42 seats.
Omar knows the reality: that Jammu and Kashmir is a UT and many of the powers were transferred to the Lieutenant Governor (L-G) a couple of months before the elections in what was a preemptive move. He also knows that, unlike Delhi, J&K is a revenue-deficit entity and more dependent on the Centre. In any case, any state or UT government has to have a working relationship with the Centre and vice versa.
The NC leader’s tone was conciliatory in his first remarks after the poll verdict. He called Prime Minister Narendra Modi “an honourable gentleman” who had promised to restore statehood to J&K, something the NC leader hoped would happen “at the earliest”; signalling the NC’s willingness to work with the Centre.
The NC leadership has also reached out to the people of Jammu — the BJP won 29 of the 43 seats in Jammu — to “give them a sense of ownership” in governance. On Dussehra day, NC president Dr Farooq Abdullah reached out to Kashmiri Pandits who left J&K in the early 1990s, urging them to “come back home”. He said the government would make all the arrangements for their return that was “long due” and that the NC would not discriminate between the Hindus and Muslims.
Were the NC to successfully bring back even a fraction of the displaced Pandits and rehabilitate them honourably, it would not only send a message to the people of Jammu but also defuse some of the existing Hindu-Muslim tensions in the country. What is unfolding in J&K has implications beyond its borders.
With the NC leadership saying it is “setting aside” the restoration of the scrapped Article 370 to a future date when a new government is in power at the Centre — Farooq Abdullah said they would fight it “legally”, not politically — and the NC’s ally Congress ambivalent on the issue, the new government will focus on the return of statehood and socio-economic development. With their vote, people have opted for the restoration of the political process so that they can approach their elected representatives directly to take up their day-to-day problems instead of having to go to unresponsive bureaucrats.
The people of J&K chose not to place their trust in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Independents, Sajad Lone’s People’s Conference, or Engineer Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party (AIP), all seen to have hobnobbed with the BJP in the past. For all their angst about Article 370, people in the Kashmir Valley saw the NC as an instrument of a working relationship with the Centre and as the most organised party.
The Centre has so far not publicly reacted to the NC’s overtures. BJP spokespersons have made the return of statehood contingent on the behaviour of the new government. Will the L-G go ahead with the nomination of the five MLAs that created a great deal of heartburn in the NC as they see it as a right of the elected government? Or, will he put it on the back burner as a gesture of goodwill? While Omar Abdullah has spoken about the “difficult relationship with the L-G” and the need to repair it, there have been murmurs of a change in the Raj Bhavan in Srinagar so that the new government can start on a clean slate.
In the aftermath of the results, Omar moved with alacrity to get his arithmetic right. Though the NC got 42 seats, it was dependent on the six of the Congress. But even before the Congress gave its letter of support, Omar increased the NC tally to 49, with the help of five Independents from Jammu — to ensure representation from the plains — one CPI(M) ally, and the lone AAP MLA. With these numbers, the CM-to-be is home and dry even without the Congress (if it starts to have qualms about the NC working with the Centre) and won’t have to worry about the L-G nominating the five MLAs and those legislators siding with the BJP.
The government can take pride in holding peaceful, free-and-fair elections in J&K. This has gone alongside attempts to de-escalate tensions with Pakistan and on the border with China. These moves come as the world watches the situation in J&K and India’s neighbourhood. With the ongoing Ukraine war and the escalating Israel-Hamas conflict spilling into Lebanon and Iran, the global community cannot afford to have another conflict on its hands and can be expected to put its weight behind all peace efforts in J&K and South Asia.
Moments come in the life of a nation (or an erstwhile state, in this case) when a window of opportunity suddenly opens up for forward movement on intractable issues. Reluctant to contest the Assembly elections after his defeat in the Lok Sabha polls, Omar had said he would prefer to be out than sit in the waiting room of the L-G. He has now won both the constituencies he contested (Budgam and Ganderbal). It is a paradox of politics that Omar Abdullah should be the man of the moment, called to re-seize the initiative in J&K.
All eyes are also on the Raj Bhavan in Srinagar and North Block in Delhi. After the “sakhti (hard stance)” of the last years, will it now give way to a softer touch, to move towards re-engagement and normalisation?
(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 11 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide)
