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| Disarm critics with embrace: Let Omar Abdullah follow the adage | | From a reader's pen for Early Times | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Dec 11: The National Conference led Government continues to be immune to criticism .It wears thick skin whenever it is told of its glaring fallibilities. It keeps its eyes shut whenever reminded of its misdeeds and misdoings. It turns deaf to suggestions from its well wishers and even critics. It is a Government that is opposed to freedom of press. It is a Government run basically by a political party that does not care for seniority and experience. This lack of experience on the part of the man who is supposed to run the Government to the satisfaction of the people of the state has allowed his adviser to mislead him in basic forms of governance. Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, does not seem to be as touchy to constructive criticism and objective reporting as his adviser is. The adviser is least prepared to play a second fiddle to the Chief Minister. In order to achieve his goal of keeping Omar Abdullah under his thumb he has embarked on dishing out ill-conceived opinions and suggestions. Gradually the adviser has started emerging as R.K. Dhawan in the court of late Indira Gandhi.
Dhawan would keep union ministers and the Chief Ministers of different states standing in his room before he would clear their appointment with the then Prime Minister of India. Those who have watched Indira Gandhi and Dhawan working from close quarters later held that whatever grave mistakes Indira Gandhi committed during her rule had been the result of ill advice from Dhawan. There are fears that a simple and straightforward Chief Minister like Omar Abdullah could also commit one blunder after the other if he continued to be guided by the opinion and suggestions from his adviser and from the man who runs the Department of Information. Knowledgeable circles are of the opinion that whatever mistakes Farooq Abdullah committed during the time he remained chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir it was the result of wrong guidance given to him by the Chief secretary, Ashok Jaitley. Farooq trusted Jaitley more than any of his cabinet colleagues. The result was that Farooq lost contact with his party leaders and workers. There was resentment in the party cadre when most of the party leaders and workers found their demands and suggestions beings thrown in the waste paper basket by Farooq Abdullah on the direction of Jaitly.
And if some senior ministers, belonging both to the National Conference and the congress, who are unhappy with the style of functioning of Omar Abdullah they hold the adviser and the head of the information Department responsible for it. Ask any minister about his opinion on Omar Abdullah they would praise him for being innocent, simple and sophisticated. At the same time they do not hesitate holding the adviser responsible for having misguided the Chief Minister. In support of their contention they cite the instance of victimisation of one leading newspaper in Jammu by stopping Government advertisements to the newspaper and say that the Chief Minister has been misled on the issue. For full 10 days Omar Abdullah had no knowledge about the matter because the decision of the Information Department to stop releasing advertisements to the newspaper had been taken after receipt of written instructions from the Chief Minister's adviser. Neither the Chief Minister nor his adviser know anything about an old adage "disarm your critic with an embrace and shake hands with your friends. "This policy had been adopted by late Pratap Singh Kairon when he was the Chief Minister of Punjab. He remained controversial but despite criticism in the newspapers he neither muzzled the press freedom by initiating false cases against the owners and editors nor he gagged the newspaper owners and editors by withholding release of Government advertisements. Can Omar Abdullah learn a lesson from Kairon ? |
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