KL Desk
Srinagar
Speaking at the 10th India Today State of the States Conclave 2012 in New Delhi on Thursday evening ,Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah created further trouble for the UPA government at the Centre, which has already been battling a series of allegations, by his shocking admission that corruption was rampant in the coalition.
Abdullah’s statement surely has put the already cornered UPA government in deeper trouble and has vindicated Team Kejriwal’s offensive against the government over the issue of corruption.
He said that no one would admit to this publicly, but it is a reality of coalition politics. His party National Conference that has currently been a part of the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) after being with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) earlier, said his experience as a politician was behind his observation.
Talking about his state, Abdullah said Jammu and Kashmir was not in a state of social turmoil. He, however, added that it was not possible to give good governance in shadow of terror.
“We are much closer to a normal state than we have been in two-and-a-half decades. Today Jammu and Kashmir has least incidents of violence,” he said.
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah feels that people in India are still not ready to accept social media. Omar Abdullah boasts of 1,85,105 followers on Twitter and has over 5,000 tweets to his credit .
Asked whether the country was ready to have politicians in the social media, Abdullah complained that the media had given him the reputation of “Tweet a minute chief minister” and, therefore, he had scaled down on his tweets. He
In the context of the arrest of a businessman for tweeting against Karti Chidambaram, son of finance minister P.Chidambaram, Abdullah was asked whether he would arrest someone in similar circumstances.
His unequivocal answer was “No”. “I believe in the freedom of speech and abusing the freedom of speech is, to my mind, not an offence for which someone should be sent to jail,” he said.
But he added that he was not aware of the circumstances of the case and could not comment in any authoritative way.
Abdullah felt that the anonymity offered by Twitter was often misused by followers to heap abuse and that many of those who made such comments would never do so if their identity was known.
He said that while he was willing to tolerate this abuse since that was the nature of the medium, if someone were to threaten him or his family he would ask the police or the authorities to probe and act.
Asked whether the medium could be used to get people to support his policies or politics, he said it was difficult to mobilize anyone politically, though it was not as if “we don’t drum up support” through the social media for various activities and projects.
