Omar Abdullah has so far laboured hard to make best of a bad bargain.
Even so, the ground reality is anything but reassuring.
The Opposition parties, including notably the PDP, appear to be gaining ground, though more by default.
Public patience with Omar's government has nearly run out, notes Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the distinguished commentator on Kashmir affairs.
Key Points
- The promised restoration of full statehood is nowhere in sight despite assurance by the Union government given in Parliament as well as in the Supreme Court.
- With its hands virtually tied behind its back, the Omar Abdullah government is nowhere near fulfilling any of its electoral promises, notably jobs for the unemployed. Compounding the National Conference's misfortune, one of its three elected Lok Sabha members, Aga Ruhullah has been estranged and is attracting increasing public attention, to his party's discomfiture.
Now that wholesale defection in the Indian political market has been virtually normalised across states from West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar to Maharashtra, its shadow over the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir is becoming discernible, only faintly yet.
Ironically, in this particular case it also carries a '1984' ring around it, though mercifully not in the Orwellian dystopic sense.
Entrenched, deep-rooted regional parties find themselves at the butt end of the game. Mamata Banerji's Trinamool Congress is melting away. Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United is poised to end up in the BJP's melting pot like Naveen Patnaik's Biju Janata Dal in Odisha.
Smaller fish like the Shiv Sena (UBT) in Maharashtra are gasping for breath in their dried-up local pond.
The political pot in J&K is palpably in slow simmer mode. For whatever reason, the Omar Abdullah-led National Conference government in the Union Territory has been on tenterhooks right from the time it was sworn in in October 2024, mainly because of its truncated authority.
The Union government has been uncharitable to Omar even though he allowed himself to be seen performing awkwardly appeasing gestures to the embarrassment of his local supporters.
That has given rise to the impression -- right or wrong -- that he might be personally satisfied with the existing arrangement so long as the chair remains with him.
That much is becoming apparent with each passing day as disillusionment takes hold of the ground below. Its echo, audio as well as visual, is more strident today.
The promised restoration of full statehood is nowhere in sight despite assurance by the Union government given in Parliament as well as in the Supreme Court.
Consequently, the over-riding Constitutional authority of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, who is on an indefinite extension of his tenure, continues to torment the powerless elected state government even as the latter faces mounting public anger for its 'non-performance'.
Public patience about the technical niceties of this arrangement is wearing out and yielding place to perceptible frustration on the ground.
Evidently, time is taking its toll. The grass is beginning to grow under Omar's feet.
To be fair to him, Omar had visualised this pitfall when he initially declined to contest the assembly elections but was prevailed upon by his father Dr Farooq Abdullah to change his mind.
There is an ominous near precedent, dating back 42 years, though not exactly in the same context.
Way back in 1983, Dr Farooq Abdullah, firmly seated in power after a resounding victory in the assembly election, suddenly found himself thrown on the mat for no fault of his except for the difference in 'wavelength' between him and those at the helm in New Delhi.
How July 2, 1984 Changed National Conference Forever
Eventually, the weaker of the two unequal sides paid the price. Its lingering adverse political fallout emaciated the National Conference with long range consequences.
The party's electoral fortunes dwindled. Eventually Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) emerged out of the debris and upset the National Conference's applecart in successive assembly elections until the latter was able to regain its breath in the 2024 combat.
Over one-and-a-half years down the line, the National Conference today seems yet again face to face with a similar, if not exactly the same, political situation on the ground as it faced on July 2, 1984, its restive flock trapped in a bind.
Like everything else about Kashmir, truth has many versions of who, why and how of 'July 2, 1984' when G M Shah dislodged his brother-in-law Farooq Abdullah from power, with New Delhi's thinly disguised backing.
Even today, there are unanswered questions in the conflicting narratives in circulation.
For example, if the Congress and dissident ('defector') National Conference legislators were to be exclusively blamed for what all happened in 1984, how was it that a couple of years later both Farooq and his son were comfortable in the company of some of the very same 'backstabbers' (MLAs)?
As against this, G M Shah's comparative unpopularity did not preclude him from tersely saying 'no' to power-sharing with the Congress on whose life support system his regime survived.
He opted for terminating his shortlived but generally acknowledged as better-administered tenure than succumbing to New Delhi's pressure tactic.
Similarly, if, as is claimed, 'July 2, 1984', was an 'ambush' against popular aspirations in the Valley, then why did Farooq Abdullah have to resort to reckless rigging in the very next (1987) assembly polls which provided the trigger for the armed insurgency?
Also, how did the PDP get the better of the National Conference in at least three following assembly elections?
How Farooq Abdullah Lost Power
The drooping graph of the National Conference's popularity and stature from 1984 is largely rooted in the post-1982 leadership deficiencies, following the demise of Sheikh Abdullah.
Simmering discontent in the rank and file fuelled by latent rivalries between competing family contenders reached their flashpoint with Begum Khalida Shah assumed the leadership of what is today the Awami National Conference within two years of the patriarch's demise.
Farooq's wayward functioning, coupled with palpable backstage manipulation, made it easier for his rivals. To nobody's surprise but his own, Farooq found himself dethroned one fine morning -- July 2, 1984.
The actual event was preceded by a cloak-and-dagger succession struggle, behind the scenes, as Sheikh Abdullah's health deteriorated.
In his book, My Dismissal, Farooq Abdullah acknowledges that his hasty midnight installation as chief minister, before Sheikh Abdullah's burial, 'had the approval of Indira Gandhi', then India's prime minister.
D D Thakur's key role (for Farooq and against G M Shah) in the preceding (succession) intrigue is also acknowledged.
Farooq's account of why Indira Gandhi and D D Thakur turned against him soon after and 'conspired' to oust him has too many holes.
Two governors, B K Nehru and Jagmohan, have recorded divergent versions of what led to Farooq's downfall. But both agree on their assessment of Farooq's flawed style of functioning and accuse him of unreliability.
Citing an instance of breach of trust, B K Nehru in his autobiography Nice Guys Finish Second, recalls how Farooq manoeuvred a confidence vote on the floor of the state assembly in violation of his commitment to the governor who was known to be supportive of Farooq and had rebuffed the Congress on that score.
B K Nehru retaliated with a terse communication to the then chief minister, warning him that his over-smartness was fraught with 'serious implications'. It did not take too long for Nehru's dark prediction to materialise.
Jagmohan's version of the July 2, 1984 developments, though claimed to be based on facts, betrays his prejudice against the Abdullah dynasty in general and Farooq in particular.
However, even his biased account contained in his book, My Frozen Turbulence In Kashmir, cites documented evidence of Farooq's waywardness.
There is no doubt that Indira Gandhi, having lost confidence in Farooq, took advantage of events on the ground to make 'July 2, 1984' happen.
Her task was made easier by Farooq letting the grass grow under his own feet. Also, Farooq, probably just once in his lifetime, contracted megalomania.
He forgot the crucial difference between being his father's successor and not his replacement. Sheikh Abdullah's successor started acting like Sheikh Abdullah, forgetting that he had not earned the crown on merit but owed his out-of-turn succession to Indira Gandhi's decisive partisan intervention against G M Shah.
Farooq's inflated ego drove him into the wrong company. He did something that his father in his wisdom had avoided like plague: Active involvement with the national Opposition.
Adventurism replaced Sheikh Abdullah's safe formula of remaining on a 'common wavelength' with the party in power in Delhi.
Forgiveness was not among Indira Gandhi's virtues. Farooq did not have the ability or experience to survive an unequal combat.
His foes struck just when he was taken in by his larger than life image on the national scene while his own homeground was slipping from under his feet.
It took the 'motivators' six to eight months to sniff and net the dissenters. As soon as the target figure, 13 MLAs, was reached, the rivals went for the kill. It was only when his horses has bolted that Farooq discovered the plot.
Confronted by Governor Jagmohan at Raj Bhavan, with the startling fact, Farooq pleaded for imposition of governor's rule rather than hand over the reins to 'that scoundrel'.
He changed his mind after his colleagues pressed him to demand a floor test.
The D-day appeared to have been carefully selected. July 2, 1984 happened to be the second day after Eid-ul-Fitr which is when everyone in Kashmir is in a festive mood, officialdom being no exception.
A senior colleague of Farooq recalled that though they smelt something fishy but a coincident occurrence put them off-trail: Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had distributed invitation cards for his daughter Mehbooba's July 5 wedding.
At the state cabinet's pre-Eid meeting they discussed that if at all there was any truth in the rumours there was 'nothing imminent' about them.
They dispersed for the Eid holidays self-assured that Mufti must have set the wedding date after ascertaining that the nearly week-long wedding celebrations passed uninterrupted.
In fact, the invitation card was closely examined at the cabinet meeting over the date issue.
In the end, not only did the Farooq camp pay for its fatal miscalculation but even the Mufti household had to grudgingly curtail their celebrations as a curfew followed Farooq's overthrow on the second day of Eid.
42 years down that line, there is palpable tentativeness in the air today. Omar Abdullah has so far laboured hard to make best of a bad bargain.
Even so, the ground reality is anything but reassuring. For one, the ruling National Conference suffered a serious setback in the by-election from Budgam last year.
Worse, the gainer in the process was its bete noir, the PDP. Only a few months earlier, Omar had won the seat with a huge margin. He had to vacate it in order to retain his other seat (Beerwah).
The Opposition parties, including notably the PDP, appear to be gaining ground, though more by default. Public patience with Omar's government has nearly run out.
With its hands virtually tied behind its back, the elected government is nowhere near fulfilling any of its electoral promises, notably jobs for the unemployed.
Compounding the National Conference's misfortune, one of its three elected Lok Sabha members, Aga Ruhullah, an influential Shia leader, has been estranged and is attracting increasing public attention, to his party's discomfiture.
As of now, there is no sign of the National Conference government's ordeal coming to an early end.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
