It is possible to give people of Jammu and Kashmir relief immediately: Omar Abdullah

Read the full story here:   See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km

Transcript

00:00Where do you see us going from here and when I say us, I mean people in Jammu and Kashmir because

00:04a lot of anxiety, I talk to people across section people, they tell me look with

00:09all these orders and directives and administrative decisions happening at a maddening speed and

00:14you're aware of what I'm talking about. So people are there's a deep-rooted sort of anxiety and

00:20panic when one talks to people, things as simple as somebody getting transferred

00:26or somebody even voicing their opinion for instance and telling them, look we can

00:30better deal with Kashmiris and they're getting they've been slapped with these fake cases etc.

00:35So how do you sort of assurage people that things are going to go back to normal?

00:40That's an important point because

00:45if you were to take the opinion of those people who are critical of anything other than talk on

00:53370, then the people of Jammu and Kashmir will just have to suffer this

01:01but I sincerely believe that it is possible for us to give people an element of relief

01:10immediately while also fighting the wider fight for getting back what was taken from us on the

01:175th of August 2019. I may not want to fight assembly elections myself, I may not want to

01:25occupy the office of the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir myself but I do understand that having

01:32an elected government with elected representatives will allow a great relief to people

01:40from exactly the sort of things that you have talked about. So on the one hand we talk about

01:45Jammu and Kashmir being an open-air prison, well it's an open-air prison because you don't have

01:50an elected government, you don't have people that are accountable to the wider population.

01:56Take for example, the instance that you quoted where a district level officer had an individual

02:03arrested simply because that person said that it's easier for me to talk to a local

02:09person than somebody from outside because the person from outside doesn't understand me

02:13and that person was sent to jail. Now it is inconceivable that something like that would

02:19happen with an elected government. That's right. And therefore, I believe that while we continue

02:26to wage our struggle for the wider cause which is the restoration of that that was taken away

02:32from us, we must also look to give people relief where we can. When I talk about

02:39restoring full statehood to Jammu and Kashmir, I do it because I understand that there are

02:44certain changes we can make that will give people relief. You can relook at domicile, you can

02:51relook at land laws, you can reserve jobs if Haryana and Maharashtra and other states can

02:57reserve jobs for local people then why not an elected government of Jammu and Kashmir.

03:03You can have officers that then become more accountable to the people

03:09rather than officers that are only accountable to themselves. So, I sincerely believe that

03:16we should take the relief where we can get it and while we wage a wider struggle to get back

03:23our identity and that that was taken away from us, we must also try and get relief where we can

03:30and we should try and sort of give people relief from this everyday system of detentions,

03:38of fear, of transfers, of unaccomplished government, of poor governance, exactly.

03:47Thank you. Thank you very much, Umar. It was wonderful as always talking to you and

03:50inshallah hopefully see you sometime in Srinagar soon. Look forward to it. Okay, all the best.

04:00you