Sheikh Abdullah Equates The Chief Ministership Of Jammu And Kashmir To A 'Bed Of Thorns'

Kashmir has been a thorn in the flesh of India and will remain so in the years to come. Its problems are complex, and the lack of understanding and tact shown by the Centre towards the Kashmiris over the years has only made the situation worse.

In September 2024, former J&K chief minister Farooq Abdullah had, in a programme on Aaj Tak filmed on the banks of the iconic Dal Lake, strongly countered the BJP’s claims on an improvement in the security situation in the UT following the abrogation of Article 370. During the interview, Abdullah said, “Tourists (come here) like prisoners and go like prisoners.” He was referring to the massive deployment of security forces in the Valley (over five lakhs).

The situation was the same for the Amarnath Yatra. “There never used to be so many forces (in the past) during the Amarnath Yatra… They (tourists) come like prisoners and are taken away like prisoners in caged buses.”

Abdullah’s target was the Modi government, which had been tom-tomming the fact that the abrogation of Article 370 had restored normalcy to the Valley.

The senior Abdullah is known to be a person easily moved to tears. The present Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is far more controlled in his emotions, but addressing a special session of the state assembly this Monday, he was choking back his tears while expressing sympathy for the families of the 26 tourists who had died at the hands of militants in Pahalgam.

“Curse be upon me if I go to the Centre and push for statehood at this critical time,” he said in the assembly.

Kashmiris are known to be an emotional people (as probably are the rest of us), but why should the Chief Minister have linked the killing of innocent tourists to the demand for statehood?

Restoration of statehood is a legitimate and long-standing demand of the people across all three union territories. The downgrading had created a deep sense of dissatisfaction among the people, who felt that restoration alone would help them regain many of the rights deprived to them in the last five years.

The Abdullahs are only too aware that the government in J&K has to work in close cohesion with the centre, with Farooq Abdullah having often reiterated that he would be happy to serve as a`bridge’ between Srinagar and Delhi. This he has said despite repeated betrayals by the centre towards him, the most telling being the dismissal of the Farooq government in 1993. Nevertheless, the Abdullahs have continued to adopt a pragmatic approach whereby they are determined to remain on the right side of Delhi. Farooq has, in the course of many of his interviews, explained that independence for J&K remains a pipe dream hemmed in as it is by China, Pakistan and India.

But whatever the limitations of their position, this was a good time for Omar to have asked some tough questions from the centre. To start with, he should have asked both the Home Minister and the Lt Governor as to why the head of an elected government was deliberately excluded from all the security meetings held in Srinagar by them?

With security no longer under the ambit of the Chief Minister, he still needs to ask the centre why a vulnerable, inaccessible place like Baisaran Meadows, visited by droves of tourists, was not provided with basic security by the J&K police.

Omar also needs to ask the Lt Governor why residential houses of suspected militants involved in the Pahalgam attack have been demolished in the districts of Anantnag, Bandipora, Kupwara, Budgam, Pulwama and Shopian.

The security forces have reportedly used explosives to destroy these properties without having issued any show cause notices to their owners. Such a destruction of properties has resulted in damage to surrounding houses. The residents of these houses have since spoken out to say that these demolished houses did not belong to the militants. Most were ancestral properties which had been divided amongst several family members, who were all residing in these homes, and to, therefore, claim that they were owned by suspected militants was a false assumption.

The Chief Minister needs to highlight how these demolitions go against a recent Supreme Court guideline emphasising that sufficient warning, including show cause notices, must be issued and the occupants/owners be given time to respond to the same.

In fact, the court has ordered monetary compensation running into several lakhs be given to affected parties whose homes were demolished in Prayagraj.

Without making any reference to these demolitions, Omar Abdullah, in a post on X, said the guilty must be punished without mercy, "but don't let innocent people become collateral damage".

Land remains an emotive issue across these UTs, and The Resistance Front, believed to be an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which claimed responsibility for these killings, had in a statement claimed that “more than 85,000 domiciles have been issued to non-locals, creating a pathway for demographic change in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir”.

The keenness among big business houses to hold a piece of land in J&K can be gauged from the fact that by July 2024, the union territory’s administration was processing as many as 6909 applications from companies across the globe. The centre has started a single-window system to facilitate quick approvals. Some of these applicants, who have been given land, include a Sri Lankan company called Wellspun and Dubai’s prominent Emaar group.

The Jammu region has invited proposals worth Rs 81,594.87 crore that will translate into an allotment of 4,935.61 acres of land, while Kashmir has received proposals worth Rs 41,633.09 crore that will translate into an allotment of over 3,671.98 acres. Ladakh has also received a large number of proposals, and allotment has reportedly been given to the Adani Group to set up energy projects in that region.

All these allotments have already created a great sense of misgiving across all UTs. It would be a mistake for the centre to overlook this and put the blame in its entirety on the Pakistanis for fermenting trouble in J&K.

It is these troubled waters through which the Abdullahs will need to navigate. There is no doubt that Farooq remains the tallest leader in J&K. Like most of our political dynasties, he has been grooming his son to take over his political mantle, and when his son was being anointed chief minister, he had described the chief ministership as being a “bed of thorns”.

There are too many vested interests at stake in J&K, and the Abdullahs will need all the skill, deftness and courage at their command to steer through these troubled waters.

Rashme Sehgal is an author and an independent journalist.

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