The Onus Is on Omar Now

THE UNION TERRITORY of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) got its first elected government with Omar Abdullah, chairman of the National Conference (NC), taking oath as chief minister along with five other ministers. This is Omar Abdullah’s second tenure as chief minister. The last time was some 15 years ago after the Assembly elections at the end of 2008. He remained in power until 2014. A decade later, he has returned as chief minister. What has changed in the last 10 years? To understand that change, one has to go back to his oath-taking ceremony on January 5, 2009. “I, Omar Abdullah, do swear in the name of god, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the constitution of the state, as by law established,” he had stated while taking his oath 15 years ago in front of then-Governor NN Vohra. But this week, his oath-taking statement in front of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha was different. “I, Omar Abdullah, do swear in the name of god, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India, as by law established,” he stated.

This oath completes the process of correcting the anomalies inserted into India’s Constitution in the early years of independence. There used to be a prime minister in J&K till 1965. The nomenclature was changed to chief minister through the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution on March 30, 1965. Ghulam Mohammed Sadiq, prime minister of J&K until then, became the first chief minister. Since then, J&K as a state had seen 13 chief ministers taking the oath of office. But none of them had the obligation to proclaim allegiance to the Indian Constitution. This was because of the major anomaly called Article 370. Omar Abdullah has created a place for himself in his­tory by becoming the first chief minister of J&K after 77 years of our independence to take oath in the name of the national Constitution.

With Article 370 and Article 35A abrogated by the Narendra Modi Government in August 2019, J&K’s constitutional integration process, which began in the 1950s, has now been completed. What happened on August 5-7, 2019, was historic. Parliament had voted in favour of the nullification of the remaining provisions under Article 370. The Article acquired too much gravitas because of the Delhi Agreement of 1952 between then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah, prime minister of J&K. Just for a glimpse of the notoriety of Article 370, one must veer through the concessions granted to the state under the Delhi Agreement. Under the agree­ment, the state was allowed to keep a separate citizenship, called the State Subject, under a separate constitution; it was allowed to keep a separate state flag; the head of government was allowed to be called prime minister; J&K’s legislature was granted powers to elect its own governor, unlike other states where governors are nominated by the president of India; the Fundamental Rights of the Indian Constitution were not applicable to J&K; the Supreme Court was granted only “appellate powers” in case of that state; and, finally, Article 356, that empowers the Union government to suspend state governments in case of emergencies, and Article 360 that deals with financial emergencies, were both declared non-applicable to J&K. To put it simply, J&K became a country within the country.

Article 370 bred a sense of superiority, nurtured separatism and facilitated terrorism and violence. It got so strongly entrenched in the psyche of the Kashmiri political class that any talk of its abrogation met with derision and threats. After their meeting with Prime Minister Modi on August 1, 2019, just a few days before his decision to abrogate the article, both Farooq and Omar Abdullah claimed they cautioned the prime minister against taking any “precipitous” action. “We requested him that no precipitous steps of any sort should be taken that may result in situation in the state, particu­larly the valley, worsening,” Omar had tweeted after the meeting.

Half-hearted efforts were made to weaken Article 370 oc­casionally, but it was the will power of Modi and his colleagues that saw the complete exit of the article from the Constitution. There were animated speeches inside and outside Parliament from the opposition benches, which included Rahul Gandhi and his colleagues, warning the government that there would be a “bloodbath” on the streets of Kashmir. Incidentally, the only other leader who talked about a bloodbath in Kashmir was Imran Khan, then prime minister of Pakistan. “Modi says this [revocation of Article 370] is done for the prosperity of Kashmir. But what will happen when 8 million Kashmiris come out of a lockdown and face 900,000 troops? I fear there will be a bloodbath,” Imran Khan provocatively boasted in his United Nations General Assembly address on September 27, 2019, six weeks after the abrogation.

The Modi government went ahead undeterred and promulgat­ed the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act 2019 on August 7, 2019 that led to creation of two Union territories, of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. It had a provision for the creation of a legislature for the Union territory of J&K at an appropriate time. When should the J&K elections be held? This debate went on for years after the abrogation. There was the anticipation of largescale violence in the Valley after the abrogation. But that did not hap­pen. There was calm across towns and villages. Some attributed it to the presence of security forces in huge numbers. But some of us, who dealt with J&K, knew that the presence of security forces was not new to the people of Kashmir. Such massive deployments used to be the order of the day in the past too. Yet, on many occa­sions, people would come out in large numbers, defy restrictions and engage in stone-pelting and pitched street battles with those same security forces. But no such protests were witnessed after August 2019. People largely remained calm even after restrictions like curfew were lifted and the internet was restored. A protest march called by the family members of Farooq Abdullah, who was under house detention, on the first anniversary of the abrogation on August 5, 2020, turned out to be a flop with nobody turning up except a few family members.

I wrote a column in August 2020, a year after the abrogation, suggesting that the administration of the Union territory be handed back to the people. I attributed peace in the Valley to the people, who had experienced life under Article 370 and realised that it benefitted only a couple of hundred political families. The people also wanted to experience life under “no-370”. My piece became a little contentious because many felt that the talk of elec­tions in J&K at that time was premature. The Jammu and Kash­mir Reorganisation Act had increased the number of seats in the Assembly to 90 and that called for a fresh delimitation exercise, a process the Union home ministry took a couple of years to con­clude in 2023. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court chipped in earlier this year and asked the Election Commission to hold elections to the Union territory’s legislature by the end of September.

That people of J&K were ready for an elected government became clear during the Lok Sabha elections in April-May. There was enthusiastic participation of voters in all five seats. Groups that had traditionally boycotted elections since 1987, such as the Hurriyat Conference, too, came forward to sup­port the election process. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of the Hurriyat, made a significant departure from the boycott culture and claimed in a statement 10 days before the polling in Kashmir Valley on May 3, 2024, that “In the changed circum­stances, issuing a boycott call does not seem to carry the sense or yield the impact like in the past. People of J&K, who have been baptised by fire from decades-old conflict, have enough political maturity and wisdom to know what best to do in the current situation. I trust their judgement.” The voter turnout went up by almost 25 per cent in the Valley seats.

A similar enthusiasm was witnessed when the elections to the state legislature were held in September 2024. It was the turn of the lone remaining dissident in the Valley, the Jamaat-e- Islami, to come forward and support the election, which it did through a statement in early September. Calling participation in the electoral process a constitutional right of every citizen, the Jamaat leadership stated that while on account of the ban on their organisation they could not participate in the polls, they would, however, encourage their cadre, with a clean image, to contest as independent candidates. The Jamaat leadership also claimed that it had always respected and worked within the framework of the Constitution of India and would continue to do so in future.

The result was the peaceful and successful conduct of the elections. It has several messages. First, the issue of the return of Article 370. The Valley-based parties, like NC and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), sought to make it a big electoral issue.

But they soon realised that it did not have any traction with voters. NC changed the goalpost to statehood and managed to secure a mandate in the Valley while PDP sunk to an all-time low. However, there is a sentiment in the Union territory, as in any state, that its own leadership should govern. In the last five years, the admin­istration was largely in the hands of outsiders due to the nature of President’s Rule. Now that an elected government has taken control, people will certainly look beyond Article 370. Omar Abdullah’s statement on the day of counting—that Article 370 was not a priority—indicates the changed mindset in the region.

Despite the claims of some leaders, including Omar Abdullah, that the mandate is a rejection of the Centre’s decision in August 2019, the numbers tell a different story. Despite securing a solid mandate in the Valley, winning 35 of the 39 seats contested, NC could improve its vote share only by 2 per cent and secure 23 per cent of the popular vote. At least in a dozen seats in the Valley, it benefitted from the divi­sion of votes among parties considered pro-Delhi and pro-abrogation. Besides, the weakness of its main rival in the Valley, PDP, too helped NC secure a landslide. Some PDP leaders sought to explain away their defeat as public rejection due to their past association with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But they had parted ways with BJP six years ago and reverted to their old soft-separatist rhetoric. Their failure at the hustings was more due to intra-party politics and desertion of senior leaders than any past association with BJP. No political party can be written off easily. It applies to Valley parties like PDP, the People’s Conference (PC), and the Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP) which need to find a new rhythm.

Congress remains pathetic and is a liability for NC. Despite its alliance with NC, Congress failed to make any dent in BJP’s popularity in Jammu, fail­ing to win a single seat in the Jammu heartland. It managed to win Muslim-majority Rajouri in the hill region of Jammu by a margin of just 1,500 votes and secured five seats in the Valley pig­gybacking on NC’s popularity.

This election has been real good news for BJP. It maintained its hold over the six heartland districts of Jammu by win­ning almost all the seats. The Muslim candidates it had put up in the Peer Pan­chal region secured a substantial share of votes, indicating the party’s growing acceptability among Muslim voters of the Jammu region. In the Valley too, the BJP candidate in Gurez lost by a meagre thousand-odd votes to his NC rival. Even in the separatist hotbed of South Kashmir, its candidate secured 7,000 votes, a big number in J&K. The party now needs to expand its footprint into the Muslim areas in Jammu as well as among voters in Kashmir Valley. Prime Minister Modi enjoys huge respect and support among the people of J&K, in both Jammu and the Valley. BJP should capitalise on the goodwill created by his leadership and developmental pro­grammes to grow into a pan-J&K party. It needs new leadership and new thinking to steer it in that direction.

I WISH TO RECALL a decade-old anecdote. When we presented the Agenda of Alliance, a common programme of understanding between PDP and BJP to form the government in 2015, to the PDP leadership, there was some furore with Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s colleagues resenting joining hands with “anti-Kashmiri” BJP. Mufti told them something interesting. BJP dislikes us, he told them, “but they love Kashmir”. He convinced them that BJP would do no harm to J&K. He also told us that while BJP wanted J&K integrated with the rest of India, his effort would be to integrate Kashmir and Jammu first. BJP and the people of the Valley should take home some important messages from this. The visibly harsh decisions that the BJP government took in 2019 were not because they hate but because they love Kashmir. Governance in the last five years, under the administra­tion of the lieutenant governor, proved that point. The local BJP should now make efforts to become a J&K party carrying this message of love, inclusion, integration and development.

The last five years of administration saw considerable im­provement and progress in the Union territory. A state that used to experience months of hartals and countless bandhs, stone-pelting and violent protests has remained absolutely peaceful. A vibrant night life has returned in Srinagar. Cases of youths join­ing terrorist ranks, once in the hundreds, have dwindled to single digits. Both Jammu and the Valley have witnessed considerable infrastructural development. Tourism has returned in full swing, with the annual tourist inflow crossing 20 million last year. A sense of normalcy has returned to the troubled region.

The new government needs to consolidate these gains and take J&K forward to fulfil Modi’s dream of “Naya Kashmir”. Omar Abdullah must keep in mind that the electorate of the Union territory has created a bipolar polity with BJP emerging as the sole alternative. It is important for both parties to work together for the brighter future of J&K.

One of Omar Abdullah’s first public appearances after winning the election was to attend the Legends League cricket match at Bakshi Stadium, which was attended by the lieutenant governor also a couple of days later. The last time such an international cricket event was held in Srinagar was in 1986, when India and the West Indies played a match. Violence had marred the game and Kashmiri youths were seen openly sup­porting the West Indians. But when the game returned after almost four decades, there was an enthusiastic 30,000-strong crowd in the floodlight-lit stadium, watching the match with great gusto till late in the night.

That is the Naya Kashmir Omar Abdullah needs to lead on a forward march in collaboration with BJP as the government at the Centre and the opposition party in J&K. Because taking it backwards to pre-2019 and beyond is no longer an option for him anymore.

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