Everything comes with expiry date: CM Omar Abdullah on statehood for J&K

Time of India

7 hours ago

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J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah on Monday said that everything comes with an expiry date and so does his patience with the current form of dual power control in the Union Territory. During an interaction at ET Roundtable in New Delhi, Abdullah said it took him sometime to figure out how things work as he couldn't have started on an aggressive mode right from the beginning."Fact is, today there are two governments in J&K, which shouldn't be the case... It is the worst form of governance... You don't come in and straight away start firing, it takes time to figure out how things work," said Abdullah, adding, "I am not given to threats as that is not in my nature. But let me tell you that everything comes with an expiry date. If I was to give you a date here (about the expiry of the patience of his government) it would sound like a threat." He said that for now, he is not on the firing mode, but will call a spade a spade."The lieutenant governor has recently claimed that he doesn't dabble in anything but law and order and security. The fact is, he does dabble in governance-related matters. He lays foundations of factories in industrial estates managed by the elected government. He distributes job orders prepared by departments managed by the elected government. There are areas where the boundaries are blurred," said Abdullah.If the LG is serious about his statements that his role is limited to law and order and security and nothing else, then he should endorse and approve the business rules prepared by the Cabinet of the elected government. "Business rules that we have framed are entirely within the domain of the J&K Reorganisation Act. They don't step beyond its boundary even though we don't agree with the Act. We have not sought to infringe upon the LG's powers on law and order, security and transfer of IAS and IPS officers," said Abdullah adding, "We just want to ensure that distribution of responsibilities is clear cut and there is no confusion."Abdullah said the LG's assertion that only security and law and order is his responsibility is a way of tacitly admitting that Pahalgam perhaps was a failure on his part. "Pahalgam happened under his watch and it seems that is his way of putting his hand down," said Abdullah.The CM said he himself was certainly not responsible for the Pahalgam attack in any way, but hinted that the reaction would have been different if he was incharge."I am not sure the reaction would have been as muted if I had been responsible for security and law and order, but that's where politics comes into play," said Abdullah. He said Pahalgam gave a rude awakening that such attacks were not just part of the dark past of J&K, but part of our current reality as well."People were shocked, angered and disappointed because of the Pahalgam attack but don't mistake people's anger against Pahalgam as an endorsement to what happened on August 5, 2019," said Abdullah.On the Opposition Congress expressing reservations on the transparency of elections and electronic voting machines , Abdullah said, "It is not something the INDIA bloc has discussed or debated. This is a discussion Congress is having internally. Unfortunately, since the conclusion of the parliamentary elections last year INDIA bloc has not met. We last met at Kharge sahib's house immediately after the parliamentary elections results. We haven't had any conversations after that." He said he doesn't share or endorse Congress' point of view on election results "simply because I am not given to making excuses for things that I don't succeed at. If I have a problem with the election results, then I need to have it when I win as well. My party did better than we expected in the last assembly elections in October," said Abdullah, adding, "Now, if the government wanted to fiddle with these elections and take away a handful of seats from me and may have given it to Altaf Bukhari or somebody like him, would you have really thought of it as daylight robbery? You guys would have thought of it as division of votes.""INDIA bloc performs a very important role, but we are not sure whether that role is limited to fighting general elections or for some amount of coordination in Parliament or is it supposed to guide us through the five years between the two parliament elections?" said Abdullah. He said the NDA seems to have more meetings than the INDIA bloc. "Just surprising, as NDA otherwise never had meetings in the past."