Yashwant Sinha allowed phone call to Farooq Abdullah, says he is ‘in high spirits’

Former union minister Yashwant Sinha spoke to MP Farooq Abdullah, who’s been in detention since 5 August, over the phone Friday.

Srinagar MP Farooq Abdullah and former union minister Yashwant Sinha (R) | Wikipedia

Srinagar: Former union minister Yashwant Sinha, who is on a visit to Kashmir, spoke to detained Srinagar MP Farooq Abdullah over the phone Friday afternoon.

Abdullah has been in detention along with dozens of Kashmiri leaders since the Modi government scrapped Article 370, which granted the erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir special status, on 5 August. 

Since September, he has been detained under the Public Safety Act, which allows a subject’s detention for months without trial. 

Sinha’s conversation with Abdullah is the latter’s first with someone who is not a member of his family or party, the National Conference (NC), since he was detained. 

Speaking to ThePrint, Sinha said Abdullah appeared to be in “high spirits”.

“I called Farooq Abdullah on the phone. He is in high spirits and was happy that I was allowed. I will call Mehbooba Mufti (also a former chief minister, from NC rival Peoples Democratic Party) as well. We are planning to seek permission tomorrow to meet Mr Farooq Abdullah tomorrow,” added Sinha, who is on a four-day visit to Kashmir. 

“I told him, if we are allowed, we will come and meet you and, if I am not allowed, we will come outside your house and wave to you,” Sinha added.

Asked if he could share anything from their conversation, Sinha said it was private.

A softening stance on detainees?

It was in October, two months after the Article 370 move, that an NC delegation was first allowed to meet Abdullah at his Gupkar Road residence, which has been converted into a sub-jail. 

He is also allowed to meet his daughter Sara Abdullah, although she has to enter her name in the visitor log book. His son, former chief minister Omar Abdullah, is under detention at Hari Niwas, which is also on Gupkar Road.

It is not clear under what circumstances Abdullah was allowed to speak to Sinha, and whether it means a softening of the administration’s stand on politicians from outside Kashmir visiting the detainees. 

Sinha had also attempted to visit the Valley on 17 September but wasn’t given permission. However, he is the second politician from Delhi to be allowed a visit to Kashmir within this week, the first being Yogendra Yadav.

Sinha said the permission was part of the government’s efforts to portray normalcy in Kashmir. Home Minister Amit Shah, he pointed out, had claimed in Parliament this week that the situation in Kashmir was “back to normal”.

“I was allowed only because the home minister, two days ago, said everything is normal… If they had disallowed me, how would they have made that claim?”  

Sinha, who is accompanied on his Kashmir trip by former Air Vice-Chief Marshal Kapi Kak and former chief information commissioner Wajahat Habibullah, among others, also met local traders Friday.

‘Maturity of Valley’s people’

Sinha is a former senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who quit the outfit in 2018, displeased about the direction it was taking under PM Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah.

Sinha remains deeply critical of the party and the government it leads in Delhi. 

Speaking to ThePrint, he hailed the “maturity” with which the Valley’s people had dealt with the scrapping of Article 370, which was pulled off amid a complete shutdown in the state. 

While many of the restrictions imposed at the time have been removed, internet connectivity is yet to be restored in the Valley and several political leaders remain under detention. After a brief spell of activity that saw public transport return to the roads and shops open for longer, Kashmir has, since Wednesday, been under a fresh shutdown reportedly driven by militant threats. 

Referring to Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s claim that Kashmir had been “integrated” into India without a single bullet having to be fired, he said, “The credit of that doesn’t go to the Government of India or to the security forces.

“The credit for that goes to the maturity with which the people of Kashmir have behaved. And from that arises some hope for a person like me… that if they carry on like this and follow the Gandhian mode of pacifist resistance and non-violence and make their point, then the Government of India will have to bend and undo the damage they have done,” he added. 

“Violence begets violence and the Government of India is in a much better position to meet violence,” Sinha said.

The scrapping of J&K’s special status and its subsequent bifurcation into two union territories, Sinha said, had resulted in a situation that was “far from normal”.

“Earlier there used to be expectations and there was hope (among people of Kashmir),” he added. “Now people here are not hoping.” 

The decision to bifurcate J&K, he said, went against the “spirit of the Constitution”.

“The Indian Constitution divided states into two-three categories. The idea was that union territories would graduate and become states… some of them indeed became states, but it is the first time that an existing state has been made into two union territories,” he added. “This is the kind of violence done to this region and people here.”