Chief Minister Omar Abdullah praised former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, calling him a statesman during the obituary session on the second day of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly. He added that if Vajpayee’s roadmap for Jammu and Kashmir had been fully implemented, the region would be in a very different situation today.
Omar said, “It was Vajpayee ji who started the Lahore bus service and visited Minar-e-Pakistan. He always tried to build friendly ties with Pakistan. He was the one who continuously stated that ‘friends can be changed, but not neighbors,’ and although he faced criticism many times, he never deviated from the path he was following.” Omar Abdullah added, “I had the privilege of working with him. He was the first and last leader to give the slogan on the border: ‘Dost badal sakte hain, padosi nahi’ (We can change friends, but not neighbors). His vision for Jammu and Kashmir was that the problem could only be solved on the basis of ‘Jhamuriyat, Kashmiriyat, and Insaniyat’ (Democracy, Kashmiri Identity, and Humanity). I don’t think any other leader has had the courage to raise this slogan.”
He also noted that it was Vajpayee who initiated the process of connecting divided families by opening the road to Muzaffarabad, a historic decision that reunited families separated for decades and helped improve relations with Pakistan.
Omar remarked, “Unfortunately, the path and roadmap shown by Vajpayee were left incomplete, and the situation today is very different. But if Vajpayee’s roadmap for Jammu and Kashmir had been implemented, the region would have been in a different place today.”
CPIM MLA Yousuf Tarigami mentioned that the house had passed a resolution on autonomy, but Vajpayee sent it back in the same package. Omar responded, “It’s true that he sent the autonomy resolution back, but soon he realized that it was done in haste. Vajpayee appointed then-Law Minister Arun Jaitley to hold talks with the NC leadership.”
Omar made these remarks while speaking during the obituary references for the 57 lawmakers who passed away in the past six years.
Interestingly, the list of obituaries included the name of hardline separatist leader, the late Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who had been elected as an MLA three times before joining the separatist camp. Geelani had won from the Sopore assembly constituency in 1972, 1977, and 1987. With the rise of terrorism in 1989, he joined the separatist movement and boycotted elections until his death in 2021.
During the obituary session, PDP MLA from Tral, Rafiq Naik, paid tribute to Geelani along with other prominent former legislators. Naik was the only member of the House to mention Geelani in his obituary address. He said, “Syed Ali Shah Geelani, may God bless his soul, along with the others we have lost. I have also mentioned the nation’s tallest leader, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and others. Geelani sb was a good orator, and yes, our political ideologies were different.”
The House was adjourned until tomorrow at 10 am, and it is expected that routine business will continue. Given the disruptions witnessed in the House yesterday, similar scenes are anticipated tomorrow.
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