BY THE WAY: Omar Abdullah’s Final Cabinet List and the Real Test of Governance in J&K

Dr Noour Ali Zehgeer
The busiest person in Jammu and Kashmir politics these days is not the Chief Minister. It is his mobile phone. What Omar Abdullah told reporters on Saturday, after meeting Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, read less like the statement of a Chief Minister and more like the plea of a harassed smartphone user: “The list is ready, the decision is made, do not WhatsApp me, do not call me, do not knock on my door or Farooq Sahib’s door, and for heaven’s sake stop sending me your biodata. I know who you are.”

There could be do’s and don’ts for his aspiring MLAs but for opposition and his MP’s it was something else, they thought it is an opportunity to play politics and create a confusion and see if possibility of split is possible. I can give credit to JKPCC and his President Mr Tariq Hameed Karra who did not change the stance and maintained that Statehood is important than a cabinet berth. Kudos to him.

The remark set off one question in every mohalla of the Valley. If the Chief Minister does not need a biodata to recognise his own MLAs, why were the MLAs so afraid of not being recognised? Perhaps because, after two years, voters in some constituencies are also finding it difficult to recognise their elected representatives.

From WhatsApp University to the Cabinet

According to the Chief Minister, aspirants were sending long write-ups, some of them the length of a book. Consider the irony. Legislators who may not have asked two questions in the Assembly in two years have now written a full thesis on why they deserve a ministry. Had the same effort gone into the roads, schools and electricity transformers of their constituencies, no biodata would have been necessary. Performance would have spoken for itself.

New Faces, or Old Faces in a New Cabinet?

The names which were circulating in political circles and in the press did not announce the arrival of a new generation. They announced the return of experience.

The Real Biodata Is With the People

In all this drama, one thing has been forgotten. The Chief Minister does not need a biodata. Fine. But the people do. They want to know what the gentlemen taking oath on Tuesday actually did in their constituencies: how many roads were built, how many schools got teachers, how many patients found a doctor at the district hospital, and how many files moved without a sifarish. No MLA sends this biodata on WhatsApp. The people write it themselves, and once every five years they read it out loud.

The National Conference has three years left. An election victory is one day’s news. Governance is a three-year examination. The Chief Minister was right that the decision was been made. But the real decision is still pending, and it will not be made in the Lok Bhavan auditorium. It will be made in tehsil offices, in the patwari’s room, in hospital queues and in the long wait outside the deputy commissioner’s door. For two years, people have heard that the government has its hands tied, that the LG controls this and Delhi controls that. Some of that is true. But nobody in Delhi stops a minister from visiting his department unannounced, from answering a public grievance within a week, or from telling an officer that the citizen standing in front of him is not a petitioner but his employer. These things need no statehood. They need only intent.

Posts are temporary. Protocol is temporary. The red beacon on the official car is temporary. What lasts is the work that people remember. The new ministers are respectfully requested to send their next biodata not to the Chief Minister but to the people of their constituencies, three years from now, and in the form of results.

I would like to see the ministers focus on key areas such as industrial development, agriculture, healthcare, and employment generation. Unfortunately, the performance of several ministers has fallen short of public expectations, with the Health and Education departments suffering the most. Instead of witnessing meaningful reforms and improvements, the situation in both sectors appears to have deteriorated further.

The JKNC government must adopt a comprehensive approach to development, but its immediate priorities should be roads and infrastructure, quality education, and accessible healthcare. The Chief Minister must remember that the people have entrusted him with power to improve their quality of life and deliver tangible progress, not to allow public hardships to persist. The success of this government will ultimately be judged by its ability to create better opportunities, strengthen public services, and enhance the well-being of its citizens.

(STRAIGHT TALK COMMUNICATIONS EXCLUSIVE)

(_{Disclaimer: The views are of the author and not of the Straight Talk Communications)}