-Omar Abdullah has lost touch with reality. He is simply flaunting power
Rashid Ahmad
Legend has it that while a great fire ravaged Rome for six days, its ruler Claudius Caesar, known better as Nero, was playing his violin and singing "the Sack of Ilium" in stage costumes. This reminded one of around a fortnight-long (June 10-23) indulgences of Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah in Ladakh, Delhi and Gulmarg at a time when Kashmir witnessed a streak of violent incidents that led to the killing of three youth with dozens others injured in arbitrary actions of police and the paramilitary CRPF in Srinagar. The deaths put the whole valley on boil with massive protests and shutdowns breaking across the region. Of the seven days, the chief minister spent in Leh, Kashmir was shut for five.
But this little disturbed the peace of the chief minister. Far from madding crowd, he continued to enjoy a week-long break in the arid desert region. Like father, like son, he appeared quite insensitive to what was happening in the state capital. Way back in 1988, his father Dr Farooq Abdullah, then chief minister was playing golf in Udhampur when nine persons were shot dead by police for protesting against hike in Power tariff in the month of June.
Omar Abdullah does not have the flamboyant and extravagant image that his father was famous for. But as chief minister of a turbulent state, one had expected him to be more sensitive and accommodative of the sentiments of the people. His thoughts and actions though are not different from his father, which ultimately led to his fall. It is too premature to predict the fate of Omar Abdullah’s government. But if the pattern of the fall of governments in Kashmir is any guide, the count down seems to have begun.
When Omar Abdullah was installed as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir after the 2008 Assembly elections, he was presented as the Great Indian Hope. Young, energetic, dynamic and many other adjectives, which on occasions defied logic, were attributed to this scion of Kashmir’s first political family. A newscaster of a news channel addressed him as "Kashmir’s Obama", forgetting the fact Obama is a world leader whose acquiescence or defiance changes global politics. Omar Abdullah is a local miniature—one among 30 chief ministers of India—whose government solely rests at the mercy of New Delhi. This virtually gave a cue to other media organizations to manufacture adjectives and attributes for the Kashmir chief minister.
Twelve years have passed since I, for the first time, heard young Omar first. It was when he contested parliamentary election in 1998. In politics 12 years is enough time to make one mature and responsible. But the sad part is that the chief minister still revels in being young and loves to be called young. Many media persons have assessed the chief minister’s mood and they coin adjectives like hot buns to impress him. Those who dare to speak the truth have to face the wrath of the chief minister’s office. A Delhi-based Kashmiri journalist recently told me that a crony of the chief minister threatened him saying, "Hum aap ke malikon se baat karenge agar aap nahi badlay". (We will take this up with your employers if you don’t change). The threat was in the context of a write-up that the journalist had written.
That the chief minister is young and wants to be perceived so can be gauged from the fact that his approach to problems of governance and administration is nonchalant and at times, offhand.
On March 30, opposition PDP leader and former deputy chief minister Muzaffar Hussain Baigh took on the chief minister and equated his "non-serious attitude towards the workings of the state legislature as nothing short of childish behaviour-- fiddling with his mobile phone inside the House and playing games, sending SMS to his friends in front of the Speaker". Recently, a US-based Kashmiri cardiologist Dr Fayaz Shawl also accused the chief minister of being busy gaming on and punching the keys of his BlackBerry Phone while he (Dr Shawl) was trying his best to explain a proposed project to set up a heart care centre in Srinagar.
To be seen among the young, Omar Abdullah has chosen a team of young legislators and party people as his advisors. Senior National Conference leaders and the chief minister’s cabinet colleagues privately admit that Omar Abdullah has completely ignored the old hands in the party and hardly consults them on issues of immediate concern. It was perhaps against this backdrop that while the chief minister was away, seniors like Abdul Rahim Rather and Ali Mohammad Sagar chose to maintain a discreet silence over the killings. It was only after repeated queries by media persons that Ali Mohammad Sagar came up with an absurd response. Instead of castigating the police for excessive use of force and at the same time extending sympathy to the families of the victims, he tried to make it a rural-urban issue—a conspiracy against Srinagar who voted for the National Conference. This could be termed as either a case of political bankruptcy on the part of the minister or sheer indifference on his part due to the neglect and disregard the senior leadership is facing from the chief minister side.
For his part, it took twelve days, after the killing of 19-year Tufail Matto on June 11, for the chief minister to come up with a reaction. His arrogance and lack of understanding meant that he exonerated the police and instead held his political opponents, more precisely separatists, responsible for the death of the three young men. Much in the manner of Nero who blamed Christians for the great fire and persecuted them, ransacked their houses to finance the reconstruction of Rome. Omar Abdullah cracked down on the Syed Ali Geelani led Hurriyat Conference, arrested several leaders of the amalgam including the chairman himself. "It is most unfortunate that some disruptive elements want to keep the pot boiling by instigating innocent youth to attack bunkers which results in loss of precious human lives," the chief minister told a selected group of cameramen working for cable TV channels in Srinagar on June 22.
It may sound somewhat harsh but it is a grim fact that Omar Abdullah has lost touch with reality in Kashmir, and he is simply flaunting power. Most of his time is spent not in but outside the civil secretariat. He can be hardly seen in the state on weekends. He makes it a point to spend weekends in the national capital or anywhere far from the where he is supposed to be especially in times of crises. When Tufail Matto was killed in police action on June 11, Omar Abdullah was in Leh. After holidaying in Ladakh, Omar Abdullah straightway flew to Delhi for a meeting with the deputy chairman of Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
When Javaid Ahmad Malla (20) was shot and killed by the CRPF on June 20, Omar was in Gulmarg. Malla was shot at after a group of mourners of another slain youth Rafiq Ahmad Bangroo pelted stones on a CRPF bunker. Bangroo had beaten to the point of near death by CRPF men on June 12. He succumbed to injuries on the night of June 19. Three deaths just in nine days. While people were mourning their dead, the government’s only response was use of extreme force — imposing curfew, cane charging and tear-smoking people who dared raise a voice. The hospitals in Srinagar were crowded with wounded persons. In between chief minister spared some minutes of his Gulmarg break and rushed to the state capital to convene a meeting of senior police and civil officers and ordered the transfer of SSP Srinagar Riyaz Bedar. Within minutes of the meeting ending, Omar Abdullah rushed back to Gulmarg to join his family.
While Omar was enjoying in Gulmarg, how could his other ministers have lagged. They were busy throwing dinners for hundreds of parliamentarians and law makers from others states, who had converged in Srinagar to participate in 75th Presiding Officers Conference. The Conference was held on the lush and serene banks of the Dal Lake protected by an extraordinary security bandobast. Artists from all across the three regions of Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh had been brought to Srinagar to entertain the guests with cultural and music shows. Some officials are reported to have suggested cancelling the musical evenings in view of the bloody situation in the capital city. But their voices vanished in the din of beating drums and strumming rababs as it was decided that the shows were already scheduled, and it was unwise to call them off. "There are dignitaries from every state of the country, including speakers, deputy speakers, chairpersons and deputy chairpersons from state legislatures who are taking part in the conference," it was argued.
While we were wraping up the issue, the dance of death was gamboling in the streets in Baramullah, Sopore, Islamabad and Batamaloo. Three youth were dragged out of a house in Islamabad and shot dead in cold-blood. Two youth were shot dead in Sopore, one in Baramullah and four others in Srinagar’s Batamaloo locality in separate shootouts of CRPF and Police. In all 15 young men, most of them teenagers fell to the uncontrolled bullets of the government forces. Chief minister Omar Abdullah witnessed all this dance of death as a mute spectator.
It would not be going overboard to say that Omar Abdullah has little control of the situation in Kashmir. Law and order is under direct control of New Delhi. This was more than evident when on July 3 Union home secretary G K Pillay announced that curfew would be imposed in Kashmir to get situation in control. It was the decision of central government to send in army to impose strict curfew. Developmental activities are looked after by New Delhi-appointee Governor N N Vohra. Market places, government offices, educational institutions, courts and banks open and close at the call of Hurriyat Conference. Despite this, chief minister Omar Abdullah told a New Delhi based newspaper Times of India “I am in total control of the situation”.
Courtesy: Monthly Honour Srinagar July 2010
Posted on 19 Jul 2010 by
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