Statehood not a gift for BJP or government to give: Omar Abdullah

The former Chief Minister says potential solutions to the problems of Jammu and Kashmir have always been discussed within the Constitution’s scope.

 The National Conference vice president says the BJP will urge the Union government to leave the Assembly in suspended animation. | Photo Credit: IMRAN NISSAR /The Hindu

It has been a year of unusually intense political activity in Jammu and Kashmir. The erstwhile State, now a Union Territory, saw record turnout in the Lok Sabha election and is now holding its first Assembly election in ten years. In an interview with Frontline in Srinagar, Omar Abdullah, vice president of the National Conference, former Chief Minister, and a candidate himself (from Ganderbal and Budgam Assembly constituencies) speaks about the revocation of Article 370, the restoration of statehood, the BJP’s electoral tactics in the region, and more. Excerpts:

This seems to be a highly participatory election, with many people coming out for every rally and candidate, eager to listen to what they are saying and wanting to be part of the process. This was also true during the Lok Sabha election. So what has changed from previous elections?

So much has changed. First and foremost, it has been 10 years since the last Assembly election. This is perhaps the longest duration between Assembly elections in J&K, longer even than the interval during militancy in the early 1990s. So, there has been a yearning for a return to democratic rule. We haven’t had an elected government in J&K since 2018 so Delhi has directly ruled us for six years.

Then, of course, all the changes have happened in the interim. J&K’s special status was written down, it was divided into two parts and then downgraded to a Union Territory.

A new generation of voters has come forward. Organisations participating in this election were on opposite sides—by calling for a boycott—during previous elections. Today they’re asking people to come out and vote. This election is different, it’s new and that accounts for the participation.

How confident are you about your own prospects and those of the National Conference in this election, especially after that shock defeat in Baramulla [during the Lok Sabha election]?

I don’t think there is any scope for overconfidence. We are extremely hopeful that the party will do well, individually, and that the alliance with the Congress, the CPI(M), and one party in Jammu that the people will return us to the Assembly with a majority.

If you had to reflect on it now, how do you view the defeat in Baramulla? Was that a vote against you or against...

I think it was only a sentimental vote. The campaign that was fought on behalf of Engineer Rashid was fought on two fronts. The first was that Engineer Rashid had to be saved from being hanged and, therefore, people had to vote for him. This was, at the very least, dishonest because the punishment for the charges against him did not include the death penalty. They tried to play the sympathy card. The second front saw his sons, who led the campaign, appealing to voters to vote for their father and bring him out of jail.

Elections don’t release people from prison. If they did, Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Hemant Soren, and more imprisoned politicians wouldn’t have been imprisoned. It was a campaign designed to target people’s heartstrings and it worked. You had the ladies who felt sorry for these boys and decided that they would vote for their father.

It was not a vote for separatism?

I am sure there are elements of that as well. You had a lot of first-time voters....well in a manner of speaking [in previous elections] his [Engineer Rashid] three main slogans were that J&K is not an integral part of India, accession is unacceptable and that J&K must have a plebiscite. His campaign focussed on these three points. Strangely enough, these points seem to have slipped his mind during his 20-day-long campaign. The only thing he is talking about is the National Conference.

In his speeches, Prime Minister Modi has been dissuading people from voting for dynastic parties that have a separatist and terrorist agenda.

 It’s again dishonest on the part of the Prime Minister to take this line against parties like the National Conference that have lost thousands of members, senior party workers, office bearers, Ministers, and elected representatives. I think we deserve better. By all means, criticise us on our governance, the BJP is well within its rights to talk about a family that is connected to the leadership of this party. Fine. But to say we have a terrorist or separatist agenda is a gross injustice and an insult to the thousands of people who died simply because the National Conference didn’t raise the flag of separatism. Whenever we talked about a solution to the problems of J&K, we talked about them within the scope of the Constitution. In 75 years, when has the National Conference carried out a secessionist or a pro-terrorist agenda?

This is probably the first time since 1987, that the NC itself is facing such a raft of candidates wherever it is contesting—Independents, Jamaat-e-Islam, Engineer Rashid, etc. How do you view this phenomenon?

One way of looking at it is as a concerted effort being made to divide votes. Why are all these parties and candidates only present on this side of the Peer Panchal, on the Kashmir side, and not in Jammu?

Why is this sort of division of votes being attempted in seats where the BJP has no stakes? So you don’t see it happening in seats where the BJP believes they have a standard chance of winning. That’s one way of looking at it. The BJP will, of course, tell you that this is part of the naya [new] J&K and that people feel more enthused about democracy. I know what I believe. Individuals will have to form their own opinions.

But if you have your constituents with you, then it shouldn’t be a problem whether there are vote cutters and vote dividers.

I’m sure that when push comes to shove, ultimately none of this will work. But that doesn’t mean that we go silent about it now because people need to realise what is happening. One of the dangers we face as a result of a fractured mandate is the possibility that the Indian government will just continue to extend Governor’s rule.

Central rule will be maintained indefinitely and they’ll leave the Assembly in suspended animation. One of the risks that we face is the BJP forming a government. But the second risk we face is that the BJP will then impress upon the Union government to leave the Assembly suspended. All this would have been for nothing. So, the people of J&K need to realise that this election, perhaps more than the previous ones, is important. So, that they vote carefully while considering the fallout of their vote.

Concerning fractured mandates, what are the options if you are in a scenario where you have the most number of seats but you are not in a position to form a government?

At the moment we are concerned with offering the people with the best route to an elected government with the understanding that we have with the Congress. Therefore, it would be highly premature to contemplate the possibility that this alliance will not come to part with its own majority.

I just want to push this a bit further.

No, I know you’d want to but my answer won’t change. We are not looking at that possibility.

What is the main issue in this election?

 I don’t think there is any one main issue. There is the overwhelming issue of what was done to J&K on August 2019. There is the whole sort of humiliation that was heaped on us with the downgrading to a Union Territory status. But then, coupled with this, there are the day-to-day governance issues on which the administration, over the last 5-6 years, has failed miserably. So whether it is services like electricity, health, education, clean drinking water, unemployment, which has only grown worse, or the debt. Today, J&K’s GDP to debt ratio is 49 per cent. We are, along with Punjab, the most debt-ridden territory in this country and a lot of that has to do with this double-engine, so-called government that we’ve had in J&K for the past 10 years.

So, if you form the government, what would your first order of business be?

Well, of course, there is the legislative business, which I believe any incoming administration will have to initially battle, that includes restoration of statehood. Enough commitments have been made publicly, privately, in Parliament, and in the Supreme Court, about statehood being restored to J&K. So, I think the first thing any government should do is to demand the restoration of that, failing which, they should explore legal options.

Before this election, you said this Chief Minister would have no powers and that you don’t see yourself waiting outside his office for files to be cleared. So if you form the government and you are the chief ministerial face of this campaign...

Again, this is all very premature because none of these things are a factor until the results are out.

How do you foresee the equation between the Chief Minister and the elected government?

Obviously, any elected Chief Minister in the current scenario will find the going difficult. Even with States like Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, etc., opposition-ruled governments have found it very difficult to get their work done thanks to the BJP using the Raj Bhavan to scuttle their agenda. More often than not they end up approaching the Supreme Court to have pressure put on Raj Bhavan to make sure proposals are cleared.

With a Union Territory, things are going to be worse. That said, an elected government is still able to push back. The Governor will not have free rein as he has had for the last 5 or 6 years. There will be a certain amount of checks and balances that will automatically get built into the system which will come into play. But as I said, most importantly, the elected government, the incoming Chief Minister will have to fight for the restoration of statehood. And then, of course, the scenario changes.

National Conference supporters hold a rally in support of Reyaz Bedar from Pattan assembly constituency for the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly election at Pattan in Baramulla on Sept. 15, 2024. | Photo Credit: ANI

Home Minister Amit Shah said, in a statement, that statehood has to be given by the government at the Centre.

It is not a gift to be bestowed upon us. They had no business taking it away from us in the first instance. And what are they trying to suggest? That the people of J&K have to beg, bow, and scrape before them before we get it. Let’s not forget that this election is hardly something they willingly conducted in J&K. It has been forced on them as a result of the observations of the Supreme Court, while the Article 370 issue was being adjudicated. Left to the Central government, these elections would not have been happening. This is why I previously mentioned that we now have Supreme Court’s records which state that the government committed itself to the restoration of statehood. So if they don’t do it willingly, we’ll ask the Supreme Court to remind them of their promise.

If the intention is to keep the BJP out, why is it that the Gupkar Alliance fell apart?

Well, it was never an electoral alliance, but the PDP needs to answer for the fact that they never supported the alliance in the parliamentary election. They put their own interest ahead of that of the people of J&K. When they were told, in no uncertain terms, it looked like five parliament seats, of which the National Conference already held three, the possibility of a seat-sharing arrangement for the Lok Sabha election was highly unlikely. But should the PDP work to support alliance candidates, we would have no hesitation in opening a dialogue with them for seat sharing in the Assembly election. But clearly that was something that was unacceptable to the PDP.

Their campaign is singularly focussed on the National Conference. It’s almost as if the BJP doesn’t exist. I guess in some ways they’re embarrassed by the fact that they were the ones who were responsible for bringing the BJP into the fold. Look, we always knew that the BJP was going to be the villains in J&K. The PDP didn’t need to bring them in and show them where all the treasure lay. But that’s what they did. They brought the BJP in and showed them the route to dismembering J&K. And that’s what the BJP did.

But the NC also allied with the BJP once...

Well, if you can’t see the difference between that NDA and this BJP, then there’s nothing in my answer that will convince you. If you can’t see the difference between [former Prime Minister Atal Bihari] Vajpayee sahib’ssort of dealings with J&K and Prime Minister Modi’s, then again nothing I say will convince you. Prime Minister Vajpayee’s approach to contentious issues like [Article] 370, like dialogue with Pakistan, like how to handle an internal dialogue, opening up the routes like the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road. These are all part of the record. And, I mean, compare that to how this current government and its muscular approach has been used to deal with Jammu and Kashmir.

Would a government headed by you push for peace with Pakistan? Would that be one of the agendas?

So clearly normalising relations with Pakistan is not sort of the domain of an elected State government. That said, we can at least, any elected State government should try and create conditions that are conducive for such a dialogue. One of the things that holds us back is violence in J&K. The BJP has been responsible for this through its failures in promoting and allowing militancy to regroup in the Jammu region. The BJP has said that if the Congress is elected, militancy will start again, yatris will be targeted, so on and so forth. In reality, yatriswere targeted while the BJP and the PDP were allies. Militancy has regrouped and restarted in Jammu during their regime. We were the ones who had actually cleared Jammu of militancy. It was their failures that have led to this situation. So instead of blaming or accusing us of being the ones who will restart militancy, they need to explain why militancy started again during their regime.

How do you see the Jammu region’s response to the BJP and what it has done in removing Article 370?

I don’t think we can quantify that response right now because we have no results on which to base it. Let the election results come and then we’ll understand. There is certainly a lot of anger in large sections of the Jammu population, whether it’s to do with the Darbar move and what that has meant for the status of Jammu, whether it has meant, it has been about the system of recruitment into the army, the Agniveer system, whether it has been about the sort of regrouping of militancy, but to what extent Jammu will move away from voting on religious lines and vote to express this anger and this unhappiness, we’ll wait and see.

Regarding [Article] 370, there was this fear that there would be a demographic change and that people would come purchase land and take our jobs. Have those fears come true?

Well, it is never going to be an overnight thing. It is always going to be a creeping effect and you have started to see that, and again, more in parts of Jammu than here but it’s not sort of gone totally unnoticed even in the way in which assets here are now being sort of mortgaged off or sold or handed out to people who don’t belong to J&K. Again, it is there for you to see how the Centaur Hotel in Srinagar has been given to people who don’t belong to J&K, how this government is trying to part with the club and other tourist assets in Pahalgam. There are similar instances and stories Jammu side. I mean, as I said, it’s more a sort of creeping effect rather than a sudden overnight change.

So would the State government be able to reverse those decisions?

Certainly. All States have the right to frame their own domicile laws and our domicile laws in J&K today are amongst the weakest. We only have to look at States like Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and others to see their domicile laws and compare them to ours. Or even for that matter, look, Ladakh and J&K were born out of the same sort of decision: the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act. Look at the laws that have been implemented in Ladakh in terms of domicile, land and purchase and other things. And then look at J&K. So there is certainly scope for building in further protections.

Would you also push for reunification of Ladakh and J&K?

People of Kargil were not happy with what was done but Leh was more celebratory. Today, that euphoria, that sense of celebration has all but disappeared. Whether that territory would want to come back to J&K is something that one can only sort of figure out after sort of talking to the people there. But at least we can continue to highlight the government’s failures to address their concerns.

One last question. Your sons are campaigning in this election and they were as well in the looks of our election. Is that the new generation of the NC’s leadership?

No. They are just helping out in a small way, as families do. You have, of course, the biggest example in the Engineer Rashid campaign, where his sons helped out. More recently, there is Ghulam Nabi Azad’s campaign, where I recently saw a video of his daughter campaigning. Families help out in campaigns, as families help out in most sorts of work, but nothing beyond that. Left to me, I’d be more than happy for this campaign to end and they can go back to building their law practice, which I think is far more important than anything else.

Nirupama Subramanian is an independent journalist who has worked earlier at The Hindu and at The Indian Express.