On the marketing campaign path in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir final yr, forward of the union territory’s first legislative election in a decade, Omar Abdullah made a crowd of supporters emotional as he eliminated his skullcap. “My turban, my honor, and this cover are in your arms,” he stated. “Give me a possibility and I’ll serve you and characterize you.”
In October 2024, the Jammu and Kashmir Nationwide Convention occasion (JKNC) gained 42 seats within the territory’s 90-member legislative meeting, and Abdullah returned to workplace as chief minister—a job he held from 2009 to 2015. 5 years had handed for the reason that Indian authorities, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP), abrogated Article 370 of its structure, revoking Jammu and Kashmir’s restricted autonomy and remodeling it from a domestically administered state right into a union territory immediately ruled by the central authorities.
On the marketing campaign path in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir final yr, forward of the union territory’s first legislative election in a decade, Omar Abdullah made a crowd of supporters emotional as he eliminated his skullcap. “My turban, my honor, and this cover are in your arms,” he stated. “Give me a possibility and I’ll serve you and characterize you.”
In October 2024, the Jammu and Kashmir Nationwide Convention occasion (JKNC) gained 42 seats within the territory’s 90-member legislative meeting, and Abdullah returned to workplace as chief minister—a job he held from 2009 to 2015. 5 years had handed for the reason that Indian authorities, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP), abrogated Article 370 of its structure, revoking Jammu and Kashmir’s restricted autonomy and remodeling it from a domestically administered state right into a union territory immediately ruled by the central authorities.
Within the aftermath, the Indian authorities argued that the state of affairs in Kashmir was too unstable to carry legislative elections. When the time for elections lastly got here final yr, Abdullah campaigned on 12 sweeping reforms, anchored within the restoration of the area’s particular constitutional standing. He promised full statehood, the safety of land and employment rights for residents, and the revocation of the controversial Public Security Act, amongst different assurances.
Voters appeared to see the JKNC as the one occasion with the power to safeguard native pursuits. The final sentiment, amplified by Abdullah’s occasion, was that the Jammu and Kashmir Individuals’s Democratic Social gathering (PDP) facilitated the entry of the BJP into the area’s authorities a decade in the past, in the end resulting in the abrogation of Article 370. After native election victories in December 2014, a PDP-BJP authorities succeeded the JKNC in 2015; the reminiscence of that coalition, which collapsed in 2018, probably helped flip the tide for the JKNC final yr.
However greater than a yr after the 2024 election, Abdullah faces vital criticism, and his picture on the marketing campaign path looks like a magician’s trick. His management has been outlined by his incapability to transform daring commitments into seen outcomes. Abdullah blames the JKNC’s inaction on its restricted legislative energy throughout the union territory authorities, in addition to on New Delhi’s delay in restoring statehood to the area, which Modi pledged in September 2024. Although this structural imbalance is basically out of the JKNC’s arms, it has uncovered an absence of assertive management.
Abdullah and the JKNC have left key pledges unfulfilled, beginning with Abdullah’s promise to supply 100,000 jobs to younger Kashmiris. Jammu and Kashmir’s youth unemployment charge in 2024-25 stood at 17.4 %, far above India’s 10.2 % general. Such failures already appear to have tangible penalties: In elections for 4 seats within the higher home of India’s Parliament in October, the JKNC gained solely three seats, shedding one to the BJP. Then in a November particular election for seats within the Jammu and Kashmir legislature, the JKNC misplaced the Budgam meeting seat—which the occasion had held since 1957, aside from in 1972 when it boycotted the polls—to a first-time PDP candidate.
For the reason that revocation of Article 370, Abdullah and the JKNC have primarily relied on one political technique, persistently falling again on the road, “In case you are not with us, you might be with the BJP.” JKNC is the area’s oldest and largest occasion, standing in opposition to the monarchy of Jammu and Kashmir starting within the Nineteen Thirties. Its founder, Sheikh Abdullah—Omar Abdullah’s grandfather—was imprisoned for twenty years earlier than coming to energy as chief minister in 1975 following an accord with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Nevertheless, to opponents, this legacy appears to lend the JKNC’s leaders a way of entitlement. Adnan Ashraf Mir, a former spokesperson for the Individuals’s Convention occasion, stated that though all events in Jammu and Kashmir—together with the JKNC—have allied with the BJP sooner or later, Abdullah’s occasion has perfected the artwork of portraying itself as the only real crusader in opposition to the nationwide occasion.
“All the political spectrum in Kashmir has made the BJP the central focus of its politics,” Mir stated. “Even the opposition events, once they criticize the [JK]NC authorities, they accomplish that by linking it to the BJP. There isn’t any concerted effort to critique the [JK]NC on governance, unemployment, or [affirmative action] points.”
Since Abdullah returned to energy, critics have accused him of conceitedness and appeasement, suggesting that he has chosen political amnesia over substantive reform in Jammu and Kashmir. In flip, the JKNC’s reputation seems to be diminishing.
In November, protests erupted in Abdullah’s personal constituency in response to perceived backtracking on a promise to supply households with 200 free models of electrical energy per 30 days. A video clip of the chief minister daring New Delhi to aim to put in good electrical energy meters earlier than election, paired with a clip of him urging set up of the identical meters after election, went viral. Opposition events jumped on the chance to name out hypocrisy.
In the meantime, the JKNC is shedding help from a few of its personal members. Final yr, senior JKNC chief and member of the Indian Parliament Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi joined a whole lot of scholars protesting in opposition to a coverage that expanded affirmative motion quotas for college students and job seekers in Jammu and Kashmir to greater than 60 %—which critics say disadvantages merit-based candidates. Regardless of widespread anger, Abdullah’s authorities has not but modified the so-called reservation coverage; Mehdi has given the federal government a Dec. 20 deadline to amend it earlier than he rejoins the protests.
Maybe most importantly, Abdullah’s critics additionally say that he has didn’t mission the political will anticipated of a chief minister navigating the post-2019 panorama—regardless of his rhetoric on the marketing campaign path. As a substitute of difficult nationwide administrative overreach or constructing robust public connections, Abdullah has shirked accountability, reinforcing the notion that his authorities is disengaged.
“Omar Abdullah might have chosen a special path—he might have engaged in additional assertive political posturing,” stated Altaf Hussain Para, the writer of The Making of Fashionable Kashmir: Sheikh Abdullah and the Politics of the State. “Maybe he miscalculated, hoping that reconciliation and cooperation with the middle would earn him some administrative house. However that technique didn’t work both.” Para additionally acknowledged the JKNC’s failure to innovate or work in live performance with New Delhi to at the least obtain native governance milestones.
“Our core promise within the elections was that the JKNC would actively battle for the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s particular standing and rights taken away in 2019,” Mehdi, the JKNC member of Parliament, advised International Coverage. “But there was no actual democratic effort from the federal government by way of the meeting or different establishments.”
The JKNC has maintained that it might’t take an aggressive stance in opposition to New Delhi, relying as a substitute on the passive hope that Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood may ultimately be restored. The bravado of the marketing campaign path has dissipated; now, the occasion largely avoids discussing delicate issues corresponding to the particular restoration of Article 370. “We have been hopeful that the central authorities would fulfill its promise of statehood for Jammu and Kashmir throughout the first yr,” Abdullah stated in a press briefing in October. “We nonetheless imagine that the answer to all of Jammu and Kashmir’s issues lies in restoring statehood.”
Mehbooba Mufti, the president of the PDP and a former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, advised International Coverage that the Abdullah authorities has capitulated to the established order and didn’t take a agency stand on crucial points. “[The JKNC] appears extra targeted on avoiding confrontation with Delhi than on delivering on its guarantees to the folks,” she stated.
Abdullah’s guarantees to revive autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir ring hole as his authorities reveals complacency and ignores public sentiment. To this point, his political report displays a prioritization of his personal political survival over true change—however the public is shedding endurance, as is obvious from the Budgam election outcomes. Until Abdullah and the JKNC change course, Kashmir will stay mired in frustration, intensifying instability.
