HT interview: Centre must give clear timeframe for J&K statehood, says CM Omar Abdullah
If the main promise (statehood) made to people of J&K goes unfulfilled, their faith in democracy will erode. Statehood can’t be liked to Pakistan’s terror strategy, says Jammu and Kashmir chief minister
A year into his term as the first chief minister of Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah has been navigating a raft of challenges stemming from the Pahalgam terror attack that gutted the Valley’s thriving tourism business, dealing a debilitating blow to its economy, and the Monsoon disasters that ravaged infrastructure in Jammu region. In an interview to Executive Editor Ramesh Vinayak and Kashmir bureau chief Mir Ehsan at his residence in Srinagar on Sunday, soon after completing a 21-km run in the well-attended Kashmir Marathon, the 55-year-old National Conference leader spoke on a range of issues, including the lack of progress on statehood restoration, his frequent run-ins with Raj Bhawan and his priorities. Edited excerpt
How has been the first year of your government?
For any government, it is a challenge when the transition is from one elected government to another. Our transition was even more unique. We transitioned from the President’s rule to an elected government. And, for a lot of us, transition has also been from a state government to a Union Territory government. So, it has been a steep learning curve.
What are the key challenges you have faced as the first chief minister of J&K as UT?
Some challenges are the legacy issues of Jammu and Kashmir. Foremost in that has to be security which is not the direct responsibility of the elected government. But clearly we have to bear the consequences of any problem on the security front. And, we are dealing with the consequences of the monumental failure that resulted in Pahalgam (terror attack). That failure has manifested itself in ways beyond the decline in tourism. It also has a very stark and real impact on our GST earnings, cutting across sectors. So, income from tourism, handicrafts and industry is down. The GST from fuel sales is much less. So our economy has taken a major hit. And we are anyway a deficit economy. We are even more dependent on the Government of India than we would like to be. So in a position where your own earnings go down, it is not a comfortable position to be in. These are the legacy issues. Then there are new challenges of having to work in an environment that none of us is used to. I have been chief minister earlier but that of a state. I am not used to a situation where the distribution of powers is vague. On paper, it appears to be very clear cut and well thought out. But in execution, very little of it is in black and white. It is all different shades of grey. And you end up trying to figure out how to navigate those various shades. But that said it has never been my nature to cite adversity as some sort of an excuse. We knew things would be difficult. Perhaps we did not know it would be this difficult.
In the last one year, you have been at odds with Lt Governor Manoj Sinha on several issues. How is that impacting your functioning?
Look, when you don’t get to decide who your officers are, it is not a pretty picture. If I was to tell Prime Minister Modi that he is not going to decide who are going to be his secretaries of various departments in the Government of India, or that who would be the next chief of army staff, how easy would it be for him to govern? That is the situation we find ourselves in. I look after the departments, but the administrative secretaries are not of my choosing. I don’t even get to discipline officers if their performance has been less than satisfactory. Obviously, they are accountable to the person who puts him here. The distribution of powers makes it very clear that IAS and IPS appointments are the direct responsibility of Raj Bhawan. But even for J & K Administrative Services (JKAS) officers, there is a problem. Summarily you decide which officer you want to send to Ladakh. This I understand is part of the discretionary powers of Raj Bhawan, but some amount of consultation is necessary. At the moment it appears that sending state service officers to Ladakh is more of a punishment than anything else. It is almost as if a message is being sent to them that if they toe the line of the elected government, they will face the consequences. Even an officer in the chief minister’s office was threatened with being sent to Ladakh. So this doesn’t make for a very healthy picture. The information department that is meant to be headed by a JKAS cadre officer has an IAS officer at the top just to keep it out of the preview of the elected government. As CM, I should be deciding who my director information is. It is now more than a year; we don’t have an advocate general. When the elected government had allowed the existing AG to continue to work, why was he not allowed to work.
The deputy chief minister publicly said that officers don’t even attend the ministers’ meetings?
By and large, they attend. Some of them don’t. As far as the secretariat meetings, I don’t have any problem with officers. Outside the office, they tend to be reluctant to share the stage with us. When L-G holds a public programme in far-off Gurez, the entire administration from chief secretary down reaches there. But, when we hold a function here in Srinagar, you will hardly see many officers in attendance.
Have you flagged these concerns with the Centre and sought clarity on power distribution?
We have submitted what we believe is the correct interpretation of the J&K Reorganization Act, 2019, to clarify the business rules. That has come into some difficulty because there is a difference of opinion. Obviously, if it had been as smooth as we wanted it to be, the rules would have been notified by now. But at various levels these things have been talked about, particularly on the posts of AG and director information. That Raj Bhawan is responsible for security and law and order is granted. But then why is that two Islamic Universities have not been returned to the elected government. In my previous tenure, the chief minister was the chancellor of Islamic University Awantipore and Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah university in Rajouri. The governor has been chancellor of Kashmir University, Jammu University, Mata Vaishno Devi University, Agricultural University. No arguments here. We know our place. But the chief minister is the ex-officio chancellor of Islamic universities which are still not with us in spite of the fact that we have moved this file in the secretariat. As power minister, I should be ex- officio chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Power development corporation. But I am not.
Why the reluctance to give this back to us. The culture department is with me but I am not chairman of the cultural academy. Not a single file of the Sher-e-e Kashmir institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) comes to the elected government. The only time my health minister sees the file is when they want money from the finance department. The management of SKIMS should have been with the elected government with the chief minister as chairman and health minister as vice chairperson. If L-G’s responsibility is security and law and order, I don’t interfere in those decisions. But why are the bodies that should be part of the elected government not returned to us? Why? Will somebody tell me, please?
Have you spoken to the Lt Governor on these issues?
Why do I have to beg for these things to come back? What is the need? When the J&K Reorganization Act is clear, you are essentially demeaning the elected government by saying ‘aap jake maang lo. Mein woh mangta hun jo mere haq ki baat nahin hai’ (I will go and ask for something which is beyond what is not rightfully mine). But what is rightfully the elected governments, why are you demeaning the mandate by saying go and ask for it.
How are your relations with Raj Bhawan?
There are working relationships but nothing beyond that.
You mean the synergy is missing?
Nahin hai (It’s not there).
What do you make of the delay in restoration of statehood?
I don’t understand it. It was a three-stage process: delimitation, election and statehood. Now we keep hearing that it will return at an appropriate time. Yet nobody has quantified what is that appropriate time. What is the yardstick by which I as elected chief minister or our government with a popular mandate will know that we have reached that appropriate time? What steps do I need to take? Because ultimately we all need a goal. You have a newspaper; your goal is to improve your circulation. I run a marathon and my goal is to reduce the time I take to finish it. Similarly, as an elected chief minister with a mandate based on return of statehood, I need to be told that statehood will return in this timeframe and circumstance. If you tell me something confidential, I will do it that way as I’m sworn to an oath of secrecy. But, at least tell me this is the inflection point. ‘Yahan pahunchoge, tau statehood aapo wapis milega’. But, it is left vague and I don’t know when statehood will come. One interpretation is that the appropriate time will be when the BJP is in power here. ‘phir tau aap bethe rahoge. woh kabhi power main ayenge nahin yahan par. (Then it’s the dead-end because the BJP will never come to power in J&K.)
Are you considering the legal option of moving the Supreme Court?
It’s a subject of discussion. Obviously it is fraught with its own risks. There are pluses and minuses. So we are examining. As long as the pluses outweigh the minuses, it is something we will do.
How long will you wait?
The matter is already in the Supreme Court. So there is not much time I have to wait. Whatever has to be decided has to be decided pretty soon.
You have dropped hints that if statehood is not restored within a reasonable timeframe, you would step aside and ask the party to nominate a new chief minister. How serious are you on this?
Look, everything has an expiry period. Even patience has. How much patience are we expected to have?
You mean the patience is running out?
I am not given to such theatrics, but obviously the level of disappointment today is higher than it was a year ago. We had genuinely expected that within the first year, this promise made to the people will be kept. Statehood is not about me, my house, my family or even my party. It is about Jammu and Kashmir, it’s about a sovereign promise made to the Parliament and the Supreme Court of India. That must count for something.
Are you worried about the political cost of delay in statehood restoration as this was the key poll plank of your party?
It should worry all of us, not just me. It is important to understand J&K is not Delhi. If this mandate is disrespected, if this elected government with the mandate from the people is sought to be rendered ineffective, and if the main promise made to people of J&K goes unfulfilled, people’s faith in democracy will go. My worry is, and I am reasonably confident in this assertion, that the graph of the elected government going down in J&K means the graph of democracy going down. People ‘s interest in participation in elections will be reduced. So, in previous elections where you were satisfied with a 60 per cent turnout, tomorrow when you have a 30 per cent turn out, that won’t be my fault. The general whisper you pick up in Kashmir – Jammu, obviously, has a different political landscape- is ‘yadi iss ko kaam nahin karne de rahe tau kisi ko kaam nahin karne denge… phir kya fayeda’. (If I’m not allowed to function, they will not let anyone do that. What’s the benefit’) That worry goes beyond my failure or that of the National Conference or my government. That is a failure of the model of Indian democracy in J&K. And if we are not interested in saving that, then so be it.
The LG has publicly said that statehood can’t be an excuse for not taking up the welfare projects as the elected government has full powers to do so.
What welfare projects have we not taken up? Give me an instance where we have made an excuse in the last one year. How about the powers that belong to the elected government but have not been returned to us? We have started new welfare projects. We have increased the quantum of social welfare payouts, launched a new scheme for self-employment and entrepreneurship called Mission Yuva, made free transport available to women in government buses and made available subsided electricity at far better quality than was being previously maintained. We are completing the long languishing infrastructure project. I recently inaugurated a bridge in Srinagar whose foundation stone I had laid in 2011. It remained stalled for 14 years. Please tell me where we are failing to deliver. The failure comes on the bigger promises linked to removal of the Public Safety Act, review of the cases of youngsters languishing in jail outside J&K, review of the government policy of summarily dismissing government employees without any process being followed and no transparency at all, and the way in which legitimate occupants of land are sought to be removed from commercial establishments. These are the sort of things that need to be addressed. For that, statehood is required. Where it is not required, we are doing as much as we can.
Do you think the Pahalgam terror attack complicated security dynamics which in turn weighed against the decision on statehood?
If that is the case, it is extremely unfair because it (Pahalgam) was not our failure. Who chairs the security review meetings? They are chaired in Raj Bhawan, not in CM’s office. No elected government has been responsible for an attack of this nature against tourists. None. Not Dr Farooq Abdullah’s government between 1996 and 2002, not Mufti Sayeed’s government from 2002 to 2005, Ghulam Nabi Azad’s rule from 2005 and 2008 and my government between 2009 and 2015. So how can you hold the return of statehood hostage to something like this. And the wider concern is: are we going to export this decision to our neighbour. Pahalgam was not the fault of people of J&K. Other than one person who was arrested, there is no local involvement in the Pahalgam attack. You held Pakistan responsible for it and Operation Sindoor followed. In a theoretical situation, tomorrow if we again come close to statehood, they (Pakistan) engineer another attack and then our statehood goes. So are we saying that J&K statehood will be decided first from across the border and then in Delhi. Statehood can’t be linked to Pakistan’s terror strategy.
Do you see any implication of the Ladakh discontent in J&K?
There will be (implications). People are looking at what happens in Ladakh. One part of it is the disappointment that the territory that is normally peaceful has been pushed to the point where they have come out and agitated. But the second part is that if as a result of this agitation, Ladakh gets some of its demands fulfilled while J&K doesn’t, then how do you expect me to tell people in J&K to wait and that we will use peaceful, democratic, constitutional means. So both things are being looked at very closely.
Are you implying that you are not being allowed to function as chief minister?
I am not saying that. If I was not being allowed to function, I would not sit here. The fact is we are functioning. Are we functioning to our optimum capacity? The answer is no. If this was the ideal model of governance, why would you then not have this model in other states. Clearly, this UT model doesn’t work in J&K. Obstacles that our government is facing are an offshoot of this flawed model.
Has the important file on rules of business been cleared by LG’s office?
Not yet. It has been going back and forth for a while. It goes beyond the routine. There are differences of opinion in terms of the interpretation of J&K Reorganisation Act.
Do you see any signs of revival of tourism?
It has been slow and understandably so. What happened in Pahalgam has never happened in J&K before. The scale of the failure was monumental. Let’s not underplay that. And its immediate impact has been on tourism and the revival has been slow. But it is heartening to see some people coming back. Yesterday, I was in the Chrysanthemum garden and saw tourism picking up, though Autumn is always a lean season. If we get snow, let’s see how the winter goes.
J&K has one of the highest unemployment rates as far as the data goes. More than 70,000 government posts are vacant. How do you plan to address this issue?
We will fill as many of them as we can afford to fill. Let’s not also ignore J&K’s resource position. This year we are worse off than last year because of the circumstances, again, not of our creation. If it was not Pahalgam, it was the floods which have caused devastating damage to our infrastructure; unfortunately, more on the Jammu side than Kashmir.
Reservation has become quite a resonant issue, especially in urban areas. What is the update on the sub-panel looking into the issue?
Reservation as an issue was hardly talked about until NC put it in its manifesto. Those who are today projecting themselves as the owners of the reservation issue or the architects of the movement to have it resolved are actually befooling people. The People’s Democratic Party of Mehbooba Mufti silenced its members from talking about the issue for the sake of votes in Rajouri and Poonch. My government’s view is that a certain amount of rationalisation is necessary. And the cabinet sub-committee has completed its work and the cabinet memo is under preparation. In the next cabinet meeting in Jammu, this will be on the agenda. We will pass it and send it to the LG for his consideration.
Will elections to panchayats, urban local bodies and district development councils be conducted?
It is not on our agenda at the moment. How many times do you want the people to vote without fulfilling the main promise of giving the statehood back? But, I am not holding these elections hostage to the wider question of statehood.
Some of the promises in your manifesto were fulfilled but others like 200 units of electricity, 12 gas cylinders, increase in ration quota are yet to be done.
No government fulfils all its promise within a year of coming to power. Our manifesto is for five years. We will fulfil them.
How engaged are you with INDIA Bloc?
My association with the INDIA bloc is limited to what happens in Jammu and Kashmir. I know where my boundaries end. I am not going to tell INDIA bloc what they should do in other parts of the country, the same way that I wouldn’t appreciate it if they started telling me what we should do here. My concerns have more to do with the frequency with which we (INDIA bloc partners) meet.
You said that you won’t ally with BJP for the sake of statehood. Politics is all about pragmatism. After all you were a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajyapee-led coalition government?
There is pragmatism and then there is also historic blunder. What the PDP did with the BJP was a historic blunder, and we are still reaping the fallout of that. I have no intention of doing that. If statehood doesn’t happen, so be it.
What will be your priorities for your second year in office?
We will continue to work to fulfill whatever promises we can this year. The goal is to step up development, to try and see where we can bridge the gap between our resources and expenditure and to try and pick up some big ticket items in terms of infrastructure projects.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi in one of his meetings with J&K leaders had talked about his intent to eliminate “dil ki doori aur Delhi ki doori”. How far has it happened?
It is work in progress. We could have gone further.
