The Standpoint

LESSONS LEARNT!

By

Karan Deep Singh

After the J&K state government and the police were accused of allegedly hiding facts about the Shopian rape and murder case which referred to the abduction, gang rape and murder of two young women in mysterious circumstances on the intervening night of May 29 and 30, 2009 at Bongam, Shopian District of South Kashmir followed by intense protests, it seemed like bad days were following Chief Minister of J&K state Mr. Omar Abdullah.

While he welcomed the high court order to exhume the bodies of two women allegedly raped and killed in Shopian saying that the move will help in establishing the facts in the case, another controversy was out there waiting for the youngest Chief Minister.

During the J&K assembly session on 28^th July, PDP leader and former deputy chief minister Muzaffar Beig linked the J&K chief minister to the infamous sex scandal that had rocked Srinagar in 2006.

Following the allegations leveled against him, Omar decided to submit his resignation to the Governor N.N Vohra the same day. In his resignation letter, Omar asked the governor to initiate an enquiry into the allegations leveled against him within a specified time frame. "I would be grateful if in a time bound manner you can enquire into the allegations leveled against me at the earliest," his political advisor Davender Rana quoted Omar as saying.

Speaking to NDTV’s Barkha Dutt after the Home Minister and the CBI officially denied the next day that he was not accused in the case and that the PDP’s allegations were false, Omar knew exactly what to say when he was asked about his “emotional outburst” after he walked out of the assembly session. He said: “No, I think it is very important that politicians listen to their inner voice sometimes otherwise there will be nothing to separate us from machines and robots. At the end of the day, if you see the nature of allegations leveled against me and the amount of damage that it could have done to me and everybody around me, particularly my family, it seems very easy to sit back and say that you reacted emotionally but I doubt that very many people would have done things differently and that they would have been so blasse about what people had to say about them that they could not care less. I would do anything to protect myself from something like that.”

On being asked that now that the CBI has sent a letter to the speaker officially declaring that the allegations were indeed false and the Home Minister saying as much, will he continue to head the govt. after his resignation, Omar said: “I think apart from all that has been done, I think there is still a little bit of formality to be done which is that the Governor officially communicating to me that my resignation has been rejected. Apart from this normal work has continued. It is not that I’m allowed to flounder and not do my constitutional duties. I’ve continued to in a low profile manner govern the state of Jammu and Kashmir.”

When asked whether he would withdraw his resignation now he said, “Rather than have people suggest I have fallen back on my word, I would expect the Governor to do what is to be done, but lets see…”

With a smile on his face while listening to his father’s words of advice to “be a little calm”, Omar said: “I am a very calm person and under ordinary circumstances you will be hard-pressed to find a reaction out of me. I am probably extremely unpopular in the media here in J&K because I seldom react and say anything which was why the PDP was so desperate. That having been said, the advice from my father yesterday was a lot more calm than the one that he gave me in person in Srinagar at home before he left for Delhi”

Lastly, when asked about the big lesson he had learnt, Omar said: “The lesson learnt from this is to always expect the unexpected and I don’t think I could have learnt a bigger lesson than this.”