A latest TOI report has brought to fore an intense verbal spat between former Jammu & Kashmir chief ministers Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah. As per the report, the officials at Hari Niwas Palace, a government guesthouse which used to be infamous as the place for interrogation of captured militants, revealed that a heated argument broke out between the two former Jammu & Kashmir chief ministers during their detention last week. The verbal spat got so nasty that the two could no longer be housed at the same venue.
An official of the hospitality and protocol department speaking on the condition of anonymity said, “Both were accusing each other of getting BJP into Jammu and Kashmir. At one point, Omar shouted at Mehbooba, taunting her and the late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed for aligning with BJP between 2015 and 2018.” The official also said that the two leaders were among the 100-odd political leaders detained prior to the government move of abrogating Article 370. The official also said they were being provided food “in accordance with the jail manual and their status”. Mehbooba Mufti is said to have asked for brown bread but it could not be provided as there was no such item in the “jail menu” even for VVIP detainees.
Mehbooba Mufti is said to have retorted to Omar Abdullah’s jibe by taking a dig at Omar Abdullah over the National Conference’s alliance with the Vajpayee government. As per the TOI report, she is learnt to have said, “She reminded Omar that his father Farooq Abdullah had an alliance with BJP under Atal Bihari Vajpayee. She told him loudly, ‘You were even junior minister for external affairs in the Vajpayee government.” She did not stop here but also went on to allege that Omar Abdullah’s grandfather Sheikh Abdullah was responsible for the accession of Jammu & Kashmir to India. The verbal spat got so intense that the administration found it fit to separate them.
Till the heated argument broke out between the two former chief ministers of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah was occupying a portion of the ground floor at the Hari Niwas Palace while Mehbooba stayed at the first floor. After an uncontrollable spat broke out between Mehbooba and Abdullah blaming each other for BJP’s rise in the state, Omar Abdullah was shifted to a forest department accommodation while Mehbooba continues to stay at the Hari Niwas Palace. This almost poetically captures the decay of Mehbooba Mufti led PDP and Abdullah led NC, which were once the leading parties in the state of Jammu & Kashmir. This symbolically sums up the current political situation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The two political parties in Jammu and Kashmir have been for decades double dealing with New Delhi on one side and with separatists on the other, while hoarding questionably massive amounts of wealth and property. with the While Farooq and Omar Abdullah, and Mehbooba Mufti looked at Jammu and Kashmir as their own fiefdom, the centre has decided to bifurcated the state into two Union Territories and suspended the constitution of Jammu and Kashmir by rendering artilce 370 ineffective. The state witnessed a political reform initiated by the Modi government and the two family owned parties engaged in a bitter fight as to who is responsible for the entry of BJP, an ‘outsider’, into Jammu and Kashmir.