Is It Getting Too Lonely At the Top? Internal Rifts And Political Heat Shake Omar Abdullah

On the morning of May 29, Waseem Ahmad, sporting a cropped beard and wearing a black coat and skinny jeans, was waiting outside the Civil Secretariat in Srinagar—a six-storied whitewashed building—along with others. It had been five months since he wrote a test for the job of a police constable, but never received any call for the physical test. He wanted to go inside the building—where Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and other senior ministers and officers sit—and bring the matter to their notice.

There, however, was a complication—he had done a course in dialysis, but since the post of a dialysis technician was never advertised, he applied for the job of a constable. “I am planning to write an application to the health secretary and ask him why jobs of dialysis technicians are not being advertised,” said Ahmad.

After a long wait, he was finally allowed in. After navigating through the bureaucratic maze for hours, he could finally write an application to the health secretary. And then there was another complication. “They are saying that for the police constable job, I need to write to the Lieutenant Governor’s (LG) office,” he says.

The dual control of administration in Jammu and Kashmir—the power tussle between the CM and LG Manoj Sinha—is leading to confusion and impacting governance in the Union Territory (UT).

The CM-LG frictions have been frequent and the spats public. The latest jibe was thrown on May 6, when the CM shared the stage with LG and Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the flagging off of the Katra-Srinagar Vande Bharat Express. “The LG got promoted, I got demoted,” said Abdullah, while referring to the 2014 inauguration of the Katra Railway station when the three shared the stage. “While the then MoS Railways, Manoj Sinha, got promoted to the post of J&K LG, I got demoted from CM of a state to CM of a UT,” he added. He then quietly slid in the issues of normalcy and statehood.

The bone of contention between the LG and the CM has been the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019— which tips the balance of power heavily in favour of the LG. The latest spat between the two dates back to April this year when the LG enforced a major reshuffle of middle-rung Jammu Kashmir Administrative Office (JKAS) officers from the Revenue Department. The move miffed the CM, because in March, the Cabinet-approved Business Rules—that define the powers of the CM, the Cabinet, Ministers and Administrative Secretaries—were sent to the Ministry of Home Affairs for approval through the LG’s office. In May, the LG sent the Business Rules back to the Cabinet, seeking clarification on procedural adherence.

While the LG has contended that he retains the powers to make transfers, Satish Sharma, the J&K Food and Civil Supplies Minister, asked: “There can’t be two power centres. Why should the outsiders dictate terms to us?”

While a senior official in the General Administration Department said now two sets of transfer orders are being issued—from the LG and from the CM, another official added: “Not two, there are three power centres—New Delhi, LG’s office, and the CM’s office.”

Not just ministers and bureaucrats, the LG-CM tussle is affecting the common man as well. People are facing delays in getting basic things like their General Provident (GP) fund applications cleared. Mohd Altaf, a resident of Banihal, had applied for a GP fund of Rs 5 lakh. He needs the money to repair his house. “I have been waiting for the release of money since January 2025. I have made rounds to several government offices and have been informed that there is a shortage of funds,” says Altaf, who has to travel 80 km every time he has to come to the Srinagar Civil Secretariat.

The dual control is impacting the functioning of the government. Several MLAs complained that they have not received money from the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) to carry out development work in their constituencies. “There is a provision of Rs 4 crore annually under the CDF; Rs 75 lakh from last year has still not been released,” says Irfan Hafeez Lone, the MLA of Kreeri constituency.

Important issues—like the expansion of the Cabinet—are getting sidelined due to the power tussle. “Srinagar and Budgam districts have no representation,” said a National Conference (NC) leader. “We have been seeking that, as promised, statehood should be restored. It will help peoples’ rights over jobs and land. But the CM is not talking about the cabinet expansion,” says senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Monga.

The dual control situation is not the only issue that the CM is dealing with. He is also facing dissent within his party.

The Centre’s decision to add Paharis to the Scheduled Tribe (ST) list, reducing open merit share, has led to dissent from Kashmiris and Dogras—two prominent communities in J&K. It prompted NC Member of Parliament Aga Ruhullah, who represents the Srinagar constituency, to stage a protest outside the CM’s residence last year. He was joined by students and Opposition MLAs from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), raising many eyebrows in political circles. In the May 21 Working Committee meeting of the NC in Srinagar, Ruhullah was very vocal about his differences with the party. His primary grievances were—the NC cosying up to the Centre and going soft on key issues like the restoration of Article 370.

And then there is the Opposition in J&K that has been criticising the CM for emphasising statehood restoration while being silent on Kashmir’s special status. They keep accusing him of aligning with the BJP and deviating from promises made during the elections.

Despite allegations that the CM is cosying up to Delhi, the Centre and the CM agree to disagree on several things. The CM has disputed Home Minister Amit Shah’s claim of normalcy in J&K. “The situation is still not normal. It’s an ongoing process. This normalcy is forced, not organic,” said the CM while countering Shah. The CM met PM Modi in Delhi after the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, but was kept out of a high-level meeting in Srinagar on April 8 chaired by Shah in which he reviewed the preparedness of security forces and intelligence agencies in J&K.

On top of it, the CM also has to deal with former CM Mehbooba Mufti who has been targeting him over a range of issues—for contesting two seats in the Assembly elections, for praising PM Modi, for appeasing Delhi, for letting the NC become an extension of the BJP, for not using his political strength to ask tough questions about security in J&K, for endorsing the Centre’s abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A, for being too afraid to raise the issues the party was elected for, for surrendering to New Delhi and for continued silence on statehood, among other things.

After the Pahalgam terror attack she, along with her party workers, led a protest march to the Lal Chowk in Srinagar, but just a few days after Operation Sindoor, Mufti and the CM indulged in an ugly spat on social media platform X. The CM, in his tweet, wrote about the Tulbul Navigation Barrage, which was started in the 1980s but had to be abandoned under pressure from Pakistan citing Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) and wondered if the project can be resumed now that the IWT has been temporarily suspended. In the subsequent Twitter exchange, the CM accused her of having a “blind lust to try to score cheap publicity” and ending the exchange with: “I’ll rise above the gutter you want to take this conversation to”. Mufti, on the other hand, accused him of shifting loyalties according to political expediency.

With Abdullah navigating a political scenario that is rife with dissent, a policy paralysis, a strained relationship with the Centre and facing opposition both from outside and within—is he coming across as a lonely CM?

Ishfaq Naseem is senior special correspondent, Outlook. He is based in Srinagar