Government has cheated the people of Kashmir: Omar Abdullah

In the 22nd episode of SpeakEasy with Amit Baruah, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah discusses his experience of governing the Union Territory after becoming Chief Minister in October 2024 with a large mandate. A lot of people voted for him, in some ways to keep the BJP at bay. Abdullah has the unique distinction of being Chief Minister not just of a full-fledged State but now of a Union Territory. What has been his experience in the last two years?

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said governing Jammu and Kashmir as a Union Territory has been frustrating. | Photo Credit: Dipesh Arora Edited excerpts: How would you compare your tenure between 2009 and 2015 and October 2024 and now? It’s like comparing chalk and cheese. Even though those were difficult times, some more difficult than others, particularly 2010 and the execution of Afzal Guru, it was also a very satisfying term because of how much we were able to get done. Of course, it ended on a disastrous note with the 2014 floods, but in hindsight, I derive a lot of satisfaction from the way we handled the floods. Whatever loss of life we suffered in the actual flood, nobody lost their lives on account of any waterborne disease, even though large parts of the Valley remained inundated for weeks on end. All said and done, there was a lot to be satisfied with. This term, we’re two years into a five-year term, so there’s still some way to go. But it’s been frustrating. Part of the frustration I expected; some of it I didn’t. I knew we would be attempting to govern a Union Territory. But it’s been a mixed bag. So would you say the fact that you don’t have control over many things is a big handicap in governance? I knew that I would not have control over the security and law and order establishment. I also knew that I would not have control over the Central Service officers—IAS, Indian Police Service, etc. What I did not know is that oftentimes, positions that should have been filled by JKAS officers, over whom we would have had control, have been filled by IAS officers, so we can’t move them. Case in point being the post of Director Information. I am the Minister for Information, Jammu and Kashmir government. The post of Director Information is actually reserved for JKAS officers, yet an IAS officer has been put there, knowing full well that I have no control over the officer and I can’t remove the officer. Similarly, there are institutions that ordinarily should have been transferred back to the elected government because they have absolutely nothing to do with security and law and order. Take the Islamic University of Science and Technology. In the past, the Chief Minister was ex officio the Chancellor. The Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University—again, the Chief Minister was ex officio the Chancellor. The Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences—the Chief Minister was ex officio Chairman, or the Health Minister. The Power Development Corporation. The Cultural Academy. These are all institutions that have absolutely no bearing on law and order. Yet control of these institutions was not transferred back to the elected government. So, the things I listed out for you—I didn’t expect that we would end up in a fight even to get back something that should ordinarily have travelled to us. In terms of functioning—you said even the Director Information, you can’t appoint. Do these officers report to the Lieutenant Governor (LG), or do they report to you? How does it work in practice? It’s not as if, if I call a meeting, they won’t come, or instructions given will blindly be ignored, but let’s just say they look elsewhere for confirmation of whether something should be done or not. Anyone with practical experience of running a government knows that officers are only concerned with two things: whether they can be transferred out, and what you’ll write in their annual performance appraisal. Neither of those two things is with the elected government. So beyond a point, you get what you want done, but it takes a lot more effort than it used to. When I was Chief Minister of a State, if I said I wanted something done, officers would find seven ways of actually executing what I wanted. Now, if I say I want something done, more often than not, officers will find seven ways to tell me why it shouldn’t be done or why it can’t be done. And then I have to find seven innovative ways to work around the objections they have. So everything is a lot more effort than it used to be, or than it should be.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah holds a placard reading “Restore Rights and Dignity of People of J&K” during the Cockroach Janta Party protest march demanding restoration of statehood, at Sansad Marg in New Delhi on July 20, 2026. | Photo Credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar / The Hindu So in your interactions with people, is there some frustration with them? Of course there will be. If I am frustrated at my level, of course people will be frustrated. That said, they also realise there are constraints. But I think frustration also stems from the fact that people had been led to believe that soon after the elections, statehood would be restored. That’s not simply what we said or what the BJP promised in its manifesto—it’s what was committed in Parliament, and what was promised by the Solicitor General of India to the Supreme Court of India. At that time, the Government of India didn’t want the Supreme Court to put a concrete date on the restoration of statehood, as it did on elections. In the judgment when the Article 370 matter was being adjudicated, the Supreme Court was very firm on when elections should be held, but it was a little vague about statehood—it said “as soon as possible”. However you interpret that, I’m sure nobody in the Supreme Court thought it should stretch to two years-plus, but that’s pretty much where we are now. The changes that happened in August 2019—the abrogation of 370 — what has always puzzled me is why reduce it to a Union Territory. That’s something I have not understood. Other than doing it because they could—political pique, whatever—I don’t know. Maybe it was the fact that it was a Muslim-majority State: let’s do it since we can. It was never part of any manifesto, never part of any political promise. And surprisingly, if you had to carve out J&K, one would have thought you’d have carved Jammu out, because that was still something the BJP did talk about—statehood for Jammu, a separate Jammu from J&K. There was never any talk that Ladakh would be carved out, and then, having carved it out, to reduce both to Union Territories. Other than cussedness and this need to be in control come what may, there’s no logical reason for it. Before the 2024 elections, we saw a lot of delimitation changes. Do you think the BJP thought they would come to power and then restore statehood? I think that was definitely part of their calculation—that statehood, if restored, would be restored by them. In which case, I wish they had said that. I wish they had gone to the people and said, “You’ll get statehood if you elect a BJP Chief Minister.” Then the people would have had that option. But you said it’s a three-stage process: delimitation, election, statehood. You didn’t put the rider—nor did you tell the Supreme Court, nor the Parliament of India—that statehood will not be restored until the people of Jammu and Kashmir install a BJP Chief Minister. So, to that extent, yes, you’ve cheated the people. Everything done in the run-up to the 2024 elections was done with a view to securing the numbers for the BJP. They knew they couldn’t get them from the Valley, so they created a whole lot of supplementary parties to try to split votes. And the seats that they can. The seat split was largely done on the Jammu side. Out of the 7 seats that were added, 6 were added in Jammu, only 1 in the Valley. Out of those 6, all 6 went to BJP. So this was not delimitation—this was simply a gerrymandering exercise. But even that failed. And the people of Jammu and Kashmir pay the price for it. Also Read | Kashmir needs to face the new reality: Bilal Gani Lone In this control of institutions, where does the J&K Bank fall? Does it come under the jurisdiction of the LG, or the chief minister? There’s a lot being written in the media. Ideally, it should have come under the elected government because finance is a State issue, or even a Union Territory issue. But they seem to have found this interpretation of the rules—that banking is a central subject. Taking recourse to that, they have kept control and management of J&K Bank with themselves. Banking is a central subject, yes, but for Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) banks. J&K Bank technically is not a PSU bank. It’s a privately owned bank. It’s owned by the J&K government, not by the Union government. So it’s one of those grey areas. Do you, as chief minister, get to appoint the directors to the J&K Bank? No, I have nothing to do with the management of J&K Bank, and that’s fine—so long as it operates in the best interests of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. If you seek to change the character of J&K Bank or reduce its importance in Jammu and Kashmir, that would be problematic for us. One area of concern is that J&K Bank does most of its mopping up of money from the Valley, or from Jammu and Kashmir, in terms of deposits, but most of its advances or loans are given to entities outside J&K. When I have had conversations with the management, I have tried to impress upon them the need to correct this to the best extent possible. Similar to the Waqf Board—an entity that controls only our own mosques and shrines, and the Union Government has nothing to do with it. But the Government of India, through the LG, has decided that it will appoint the chairman of the Waqf Board. On the issue of statehood—I think you had a meeting yesterday with the Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Did you discuss this? Look, it comes up almost every time. There’s nothing new I can add other than to say it’s a work in progress, except the work is incredibly slow and the progress is almost non-existent. All I can do is keep chipping away, keep reminding the Government of India, both publicly and privately, and increasingly now even from the streets, that you’re gradually pushing us to a point where it will just be about confrontation. That was something I didn’t want. Right from the beginning, I’ve tried to have a more conciliatory approach, believing that was the way to get this issue resolved. But so far, that doesn’t seem to have worked. Even when you were elected chief minister, on the law and order front, there are many players in the Valley—the Corps Commander, the Director General of Police, and there was always a larger-than-life Governor as well. So it’s not as if the chief minister was calling all the shots. The chief minister was ex officio the head of the Unified Command. Both Corps Commanders reported to the chief minister as his or her security advisers. In the six years I was Chief Minister, I don’t recall a single instance where Governor Narinder Nath Vohra tread on my toes in any way. He may have been briefed, he may have asked for information, but I don’t recall a single instance where he overstepped any boundaries. So I think it largely depends on the occupant of Lok Bhavan. That was a different time, a different person. This is a different time, so I’m not sure it would be quite as smooth today, even if we were a State, because we know how Lok Bhavans have been weaponised, particularly in opposition-ruled States, in the last few years.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is greeted by his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif after Modi took the oath of office at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on May 26, 2014. | Photo Credit: Adnan Abidi / Reuters One of the central tenets of the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference (JKNC) position was the special status of Jammu and Kashmir—the line that nationalist politicians, including the JKNC, sold to the people of Kashmir. When August 2019 happened, in my view, the bottom of that argument was taken away, and there was no consultation. I remember once when I went to Srinagar, you were under detention and not even allowed to step out. So how do you marry these contradictions? What do you tell people when they ask: Look, this is what you told us for so many decades, and suddenly there’s nothing to say? Well, it’s not as if we have nothing to say. The Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir, as recently as this term, passed a resolution calling for special status and constitutional guarantees to be restored. So it’s not as if this is no longer part of the foundation. In terms of an argument, this was an argument. Our argument is that what was taken away from us needs to be given back to us. It was taken away unfairly—even if you might struggle now to use the word “unconstitutionally” because the Constitution Bench has put a stamp on it. But we still believe it was taken away unfairly. We still believe that if not today, tomorrow—if not tomorrow, the day after—there will be a government at the Centre with whom we can sit down and at least talk about these things. Without prejudicing what those discussions may be, we remain firm that what was done to Jammu and Kashmir was unjust and unfair. I will even go as far as to say it was unconstitutional, even if we weren’t able to convince the Supreme Court of that. Hopefully, one of these days we’ll get a government at the Centre with whom we can discuss these things. It’s been a long time since there has been no contact between India and Pakistan. We saw the post-Pahalgam events, Operation Sindoor and so on. Our government advices Ukraine and Russia to sit down and have a dialogue. Do you think that’s something India and Pakistan should engage in as well? Look, we’re always much better at giving advice than at following our own advice. We were very happy to advice Sri Lanka on how it should give more autonomy to northern Sri Lanka to address the concerns of the Tamil Eelam. Similarly, we advice anyone about any manner of things, but when it comes to following that advice ourselves, we’re a little more reluctant. Relations between India and Pakistan have to be a matter of concern, particularly for us in Jammu and Kashmir, because a deterioration in the relationship adversely affects us and hits us really hard—what happened in Pahalgam, followed by Operation Sindoor, the loss of civilian lives, property, and all the rest of it. So we would like nothing more than a normalisation of ties, but I’m also realistic enough to know that it takes two hands to clap. So the fact that we have a less-than-ideal relationship with Pakistan, I cannot pin on the Government of India and say, “You guys haven’t tried hard enough.” At least in his first term in office, Prime Minister Modi actually did—he went further than either we would have thought, and possibly further than previous prime ministers. To have invited Nawaz Sharif to his oath ceremony, then to have dropped in unannounced and attended a family wedding—things like this were unexpected. We had hoped they would help improve relations, but they didn’t. At this point, the only thing one can do is hope that Pakistan will at least help create a climate conducive to sustained engagement. At this point, that climate doesn’t exist, but one hopes it will. You would have seen the news reports coming out from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir—many people killed in the last couple of months in police firing and firing by security forces. How do you see that? Well, Pakistan is another one that’s great at giving advice and terrible at following it. You only have to look at Pakistan’s statements when we had trouble in 2008, 2010, and 2016—how eloquent they were about the need to treat citizens humanely. If only they would follow that advice in terms of how they deal with the part of Jammu and Kashmir they currently control. The citizens there are protesting for very basic development—it’s not even an anti-Pakistan campaign. As I said in my speech on August 15 this year, I suspect that if what happened in J&K in 2019 hadn’t happened, there might have been a stronger constituency on that side of the Line of Control protesting to be reunited with this side of Jammu and Kashmir. But that’s not what’s happening. I think Pakistan needs to look long and hard at the way it’s treating the citizens it controls, and follow the advice it was so generously giving India when we had trouble.

Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) supporters celebrate the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan following protests over alleged examination irregularities and the NEET paper leak, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on July 25, 2026. | Photo Credit: Shahi Shekhar Kashyap / The Hindu When I visited your constituency, Ganderbal, a couple of years ago, people told me about a large number of detainees over the years who have since been moved across different jails in India. Is there any movement on their release? Well, it’s conversations that have been had. I have time and again been told that it’s a work in progress. It’s not a finite number—the number changes, and more often than not, it changes for the better, as gradually people are released back into the system. Do we have a number? You wouldn’t get a number from me. Again, for reasons I don’t understand, I’m not privy to any intelligence inputs whatsoever. I don’t get briefed or informed. So, where matters of security and law and order are concerned, you probably have better sources than I do. I get my information from Twitter. A lot of people had genuine issues because they were taken away. Their families are moving here. You’re treating them in a very cruel manner. Most of them have not been charged with anything, much less tried or found guilty. You’ve detained them under preventive detention laws—you’re doing it because you found a law that allows you to do it. If there is something substantive against them, please file a charge sheet, prosecute them, get them convicted, and then jail them. You can’t detain hundreds or thousands of people under preventive detention laws and then ship them to other parts of the country and forget about them. It doesn’t work that way. You would have seen the protests at Jantar Mantar. I think you had a protest scheduled on the same day. Kashmiris are very sharp political analysts, not only of their own State or Union Territory but also of the national situation. Putting on your analyst hat, how do you see these protests, and what do they mean for the central government? I think this is probably the most uncomfortable you’ve found the central government since Prime Minister Modi won his first term in 2014. I don’t think they’ve ever been subject to this kind of hostility or mockery. This is a government that is not used to being disagreed with, much less humiliated—a government that doesn’t give up on ministers. One of the things they were privately talking about in the run-up to the 2014 elections was that Manmohan Singh displayed incredible weakness by dropping ministers because the opposition demanded it, and that was something they would never do. Other than one minister who stood accused of matters unrelated to governance, no minister has ever been dropped because there’s been a demand for it. This is the first time a street protest forced the government to sacrifice a minister they didn’t want to. And after that, things haven’t really got better for them. They may not have got much worse, but they haven’t got much better. They had probably their worst session of Parliament in many years—they got almost nothing done. They were approaching that session with a view to getting major legislation, including women’s reservation and one nation, one election, through Parliament. They weren’t able to. And I think probably what irks them the most is that the person they have spent more than a decade trying to humiliate and mock has emerged as quite a rallying point for youngsters in the shape of Rahul Gandhi. I have no conversations from the horse’s mouth, but from what one hears, the numbers in Pune that attended his students’ gathering left these people fairly uncomfortable. And his ability to strike a chord with this younger generation—something this government Also Read | The US position on Kashmir hasn’t changed: Michael Kugelman In Manmohan Singh’s second term, there was a series of scandals and a display of weakness, while in the first term, they passed significant legislation such as the Right to Education Act. Do you think Modi is experiencing something similar in his third term? I think it’s a bit early, because if there’s anything I’ve come to learn from Prime Minister Modi and this government, it’s that they have this amazing ability to reinvent themselves and shift the narrative. They haven’t quite been able to do it yet, but we’re still 2.5 years away from another general election, so anything is possible. Manmohan Singh and his government suffered from a constant drip of scandal and bad news. This government still has very tight control over the narrative. There are very few newspapers, if any, that would have the guts to write about Prime Minister Modi the way they wrote about Manmohan Singh. If you see social media... I’m reluctant to juxtapose what we see on social media with the mood across the country. Urban, semi-urban, educated youngsters are one part of the picture. How much this actually reflects the ground reality in rural India, in the Hindi heartland, which is the core constituency of the BJP, remains to be seen. That said, the fact that the BJP wasn’t able to retain the Assembly seat vacated by its recently installed national party president would be, if I were in the BJP, a cause for concern—it would suggest a fatigue factor setting in. You’ve been hearing the same voices, seeing the same faces, hearing the same words, now for going on 13 years. I recently interviewed Chidambaram, and he was very clear that Vijay came to power in Tamil Nadu backed by Gen Z votes. And when 23 million people follow a CJP handle that nobody really knew about, it probably gives you some sense of the disaffection. One of the things he said was that this young generation—who would have been five or six years old when Modi came to power in 2014—and, interestingly, the message coming out after all these years of Hindu-Muslim propaganda is that this generation and these protesters have been very secular in their messaging. Yes, they have. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Will this translate into disaffection reflected in how you vote? That remains to be seen. There are some crucial elections coming up in the next few months—I’ll be very keen to see how Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, etc., go. As I said, this is perhaps the most uncomfortable time this government has had. Where they go from here is the unanswered. Amit Baruah is an independent journalist.This interview transcript has been edited and shortened for length and clarity. To watch the full, unedited conversation, visit Frontline’s YouTube channel or Frontline’s website.