Omar Abdullah Interview: 'Easier to Demand My Head Than to Seek Accountability’

In an exclusive interview, the J&K CM questions the model of governance where he has a 'headmaster' sitting on top.

(Photo: Kamran Akhter/The Quint)

Each time tensions between India and Pakistan soar, Jammu and Kashmir is caught bang in the middle.

After the shocking killing of civilians in Pahalgam’s Baisaran meadow and the Operation Sindoor that followed, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was left staring at the debris of conflict. His party, the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference, won the electoral contest convincingly last year, but since the state was downgraded to a Union Territory in 2019, the Chief Minister has no role to play in security.

In this exclusive interview with The Quint, he questions the model of governance where he has a ‘headmaster’ sitting on top and is emphatic about why he will not be a part of security meetings just for the sake of ‘tokenism.’

He also sets the record straight on the crucial question of whether travel agents took tourists to Baisaran without permission or sanction, as was being rumoured.

Excerpts from the interview:

It is not easy being the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. Each time you sit on that chair, what is the kind of burden that you carry? What are the issues that weigh you down?

That’s bound to be the case since we are a border territory. Pre-2019, we shared borders with both Pakistan and China. Post-2019, with the separation of Ladakh, it is Pakistan that we have to contend with. I'm not given to unnecessarily worrying about things that are not in my control.

So I don't sit and wonder where the next lot of trouble is going to come from or where the next attack might happen or where the next sort of tensions between India and Pakistan might break out, because I mean, this job is difficult enough as it is, so why burden oneself with things that haven't even happened yet?

So I'm more inclined to deal with the reality as it exists now, rather than fretting about what might or might not happen. Jammu and Kashmir, without doubt, has the worst model of governance that this country could come up with. It is a union territory with an assembly, we have an elected government, but then you also have an unelected super headmaster sitting on top.

There's a reason why you have a single point of command in every organisation, in the armed forces, in business houses, in sports teams, in governments. You don't have two sets of captains in a cricket team. You don't have a captain for fielding and a captain for batting. You have one captain. You don't have two army chiefs, one for fights within the country and one for external battles. You have one army chief. And so on and so forth.

So, this sort of model where you divide responsibilities between two sets of government, one elected and one unelected… there is no logical reason for it in terms of governance. There may be political compulsions for it, but there are no arguments that you can make that can justify this kind of order from a governance point of view.

When I interviewed Farooq Abdullah after the Pahalgam attack, he pointed to the fact that you were not a part of any of the security meetings. He called it ‘unfortunate’. It is difficult, isn’t it, particularly in J&K, where the guns haven’t been silenced? In fact, you are the one who stood up and got counted, whether it was you attending the last rites of Adil Shah—the pony operator who got killed—or later, when we saw you cycling the streets of Pahalgam.

That's the job I have, and that's what I have to do. I didn't do it out of a sort of a favour, an obligation. That's what I wanted to do. As far as not being part of the security meetings are concerned, I'm actually glad I'm not, because there's no point putting me there just as a token. If I'm not part of the decision making, if I can't affect change, if the inputs are not sort of acted upon, then to have me there just to share the blame—that doesn't work. I'm not going to sit there just to make up the numbers. 

And, I mean, the sort of idiots that were demanding my government's head and stuff like that, in the studios, they're just ill-informed. They don't know any better. They're also cowards, because it's much easier to demand my head than to demand actual accountability.

The calls for retribution were louder than the calls for accountability… 

After an attack like Pahalgam, you can't not have some sort of response. In the past, the response used to be less public but over the last three instances—Uri, Pulwama, and Operation Sindoor—it has become very public. This is the new normal. The government of India gets to decide the policies that it feels best suit the situation.

The border areas paid a price, whether it was in Poonch, Uri, or Kupwara. Civilians died and so many houses have been damaged. That has added to your responsibility.

Usually, those near the line of control get hit. This time, however, I have party colleagues who said they were just sitting near the fence, watching the shells go over. The Pakistani military was targeting the interiors. I don't remember the last time Poonch came under such relentless shelling. 

We were on the issue of security. Does it not bother you that there wasn’t a single policeman in sight, anywhere near the Baisaran meadow in Pahalgam? In the end, you were the one who had to send tourists back in coffins.

We haven't seen an attack of this nature in more than 20 years. We had sort of convinced ourselves that violence of this nature was a part of our dark history, that those days are gone and we won't see them again. But the fact is that violence is part of our current reality. God forbid, and I hope not, but who knows what might happen in the future. Tourists had started visiting areas that were off-beat destinations. The Baisaran meadow itself was a destination that stayed open for eight months. 

There has been a whisper campaign that tourist guides accessed Baisaran, a popular and picturesque meadow, without permission.

Let me set the record straight. Only last year, the current Lieutenant Governor’s government, [headed by Manoj Sinha] issued a tender for Baisaran for three years and made it a ticket destination. The only time it closed was after heavy snowfall and during the Amarnath Yatra. There was an effort to feed sections in the media with the line that the tour operators opened it without permission.

As the tourism minister, you would obviously know. Let me clarify this once again, no permission was needed to open Baisaran?

I asked for all the papers, all the records. There is not a single piece of paper to suggest that written permission or any sort of permission was ever sought. And again, I make the point: Baisaran was bid and sold as a ticketed destination. I mean, my numbers are correct. More than 40,000 or 50,000 people had already visited Baisaran by 22 April. The number could be higher.

Now, if it had been opened without permission, was the administration sleeping? Couldn't they see 50,000 people trooping up the mountain on ponies? Show me a piece of paper where the police have said that Baisaran should have been closed or why it was open without permission.

Let's come to the solidarity of the Kashmiri street and the manner in which people marched in unison, saying, ‘Not in our name.’ We haven’t seen anything like this for 35 years. What according to you has changed? 

Pahalgam was an inhuman act. The way in which the tourists were lined up and killed at close range was inhumanity at its worst. We pride ourselves on being hospitable. The killings evoked a deep sense of revulsion. The outpouring was totally spontaneous. I can't stand up and claim that my government was instrumental in organising this. People came out of their own free will.

What, for you, are the lessons of Pahalgam and Operation Sindoor? 

I think there are lessons for all of us in government, be it the elected government, the unelected government or the Union government. The lesson is that Jammu and Kashmir is not normal and you can't just wish normalcy. Normalcy has to be created, and the fact is that you can't also normalise Jammu and Kashmir without taking the people along with you.

There is a growing sense of disappointment, and rightly so, that while we talk about and sympathise with the families of the 26 people killed in Pahalgam, we have completely forgotten that we lost 24 lives as a result of Pakistani shelling and bombardment. We've lost children, we've lost government officers. What do I tell the father and mother of the twins who were killed? What do I say to the wife and family of my additional DC who was killed in shelling in Rajouri?

Sympathy and solidarity for them has been missing from the national narrative.

The problem seems to be that while everyone talks about Kashmir, no one talks to Kashmir. In the past, there were efforts by different prime ministers, including Deve Gowda and AB Vajpayee, but Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi has not acknowledged the solidarity of the Kashmiris on the streets. He’s addressed the nation, but we haven’t heard him say anything.

The Home Minister has travelled to Poonch and that’s part of narrative building. You know, for all the talking that previous prime ministers did on autonomy or other issues, what good did it really do us? Look, if the talk is not going to be followed by concrete steps, then I'd rather actually not have the talk. Follow the talk with action, then we'll see.

When Foreign Minister S Jaishankar called his counterpart in Afghanistan, the thought that struck me was, if India can talk to the Taliban, why can’t it talk to our own people in Kashmir?

That’s not a question for me to answer. When you get a chance to talk to people in the Government of India, you should pose this question to them. I can only answer for myself and my government. All I’ll say is that we need to consolidate what we saw in Kashmir after the killings in Pahalgam. We need to respect the sentiment and build on it. 

How is your conversation on the restoration of statehood going? 

It's a conversation. It's going on. Do I wish that it had reached a sort of a final conclusion? Of course I do. It hasn't, but it's a conversation I have to keep alive.

Last question: do you forever live in the fear of another terror strike? 

I wouldn’t use the word fear, but yes, the possibility of a strike is a reality. Look at the difference between Kashmir on 21 April and Kashmir on 23 April. [Just] one day can change it.