Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years Part 11

While this was tame compared to the azaadi demand of militants, it was anathema to the BJP and its ilk, which have always stood for the abrogation of Article 370 and putting J&K at par with other states in the Union. The NC had always walked this tightrope, with Sheikh Saheb adept at wording political matters in such a way that satisfied both Kashmiris and Delhi. Farooq, looking ahead to the 2002 a.s.sembly election, knew he had to deliver on his promises well in time, and so, on 19 June 2000, the a.s.sembly was convened for a week-long special session to discuss the committee's report and pa.s.s a resolution accepting it.

The NDA was not happy about the turn of events. 'What is your friend up to?' Brajesh Mishra asked me.

I spoke to the chief minister. 'There is a little concern here, everyone is asking about the resolution.'

What Farooq told the top IB man in Srinagar, K.M. Singh, was that he had contested the 1996 election because the government of India wanted him to contest, and at that time he had told the government that he needed a plank to fight an election. Autonomy had been that plank. His committee had in fact been discussing the matter with Governor Gary Saxena while preparing the report; and now another election was coming up, so his government had to do something about autonomy.

Furthermore, Farooq said to me, ever since the report was tabled, he had been pleading with New Delhi to also appoint a committee, which could have a couple of cabinet ministers on it. He seemed to imply that such a committee could be an eyewash, but at least it would keep autonomy in play, to help the NC in the 2002 elections. However, there was no response to his suggestion from the NDA, and left with no choice, Farooq was forced to move this resolution in his a.s.sembly.

'Why are you worried?' Farooq asked. 'Everybody has to be kept happy. Tell them not to worry, the resolution won't get pa.s.sed. Kucch nahin hoga.'

Events apparently overtook the chief minister and the resolution was pa.s.sed by the J&K a.s.sembly. Again Farooq thought it was no big deal and he sent the resolution to the Union home ministry, knowing fully well that the home ministry headed by the NDA's resident hardliner, L.K. Advani, was not going to do anything with the resolution. He figured the NDA government would just kick the can down the road, giving him both an escape route and an election plank.

But New Delhi was not happy at all. Members of the NDA government were upset, and a cabinet meeting was immediately called. It summarily threw out the resolution, saying it was not acceptable.

Farooq was infuriated. The NDA government was not playing politics when he needed it to, for his own party's well-being; it was almost symbolic, as if it were being more hardline than was necessary, shutting the Kashmiris out, without so much as a conversation. The DelhiSrinagar relations.h.i.+p became strained.

Farooq threatened to resign, but more than that, he threatened to pull out of the NDA coalition. Omar was summoned to Srinagar, and there was on 10 July 2000 a meeting of the NC MLAs. The meeting discussed what the next step should be. The atmosphere was very tense, both in Srinagar and in New Delhi. The meeting carried on the entire day, and the MLAs decided to continue the following day.

But the next morning, on 11 July 2000, Begum Abdullah died of a cardiac arrest. The lady was eighty-four years old. And this unfortunate event fortunately saved the day.

K.M. Singh called up and said, 'Please help, this is an opportunity.'

I went to Brajesh Mishra. 'Farooq has lost his mother,' I said.

'Haan-haan, Advaniji jaa rahe hain,' he said.

'Maybe something more than Advaniji,' I suggested. 'Maybe the PM should go.'

Brajesh Mishra looked at me. 'You really think so?' he asked.

'Yes, I think so.'

'Okay,' he said. 'Let me speak to the PM.'

Vajpayee, not surprisingly, said, theek hai, jayenge.

'In that case,' I said, 'I would also like to go.'

'Sure,' he said.

The delegation included Defence Minister George Fernandes, Advani, and the prime minister. When we reached Srinagar, the VIPs took their time in coming out, so I was off the aircraft ahead of everyone. When I stepped onto the tarmac, the first thing that happened was that Omar Abdullah hugged me. People might have thought it unusual because Omar was not normally given to displaying emotion, but on this occasion he was relieved to see us.

The strain over the autonomy resolution had rattled him completely. At that time he was not dreaming of, or even distantly dreaming of, becoming chief minister. He just didn't want to lose his job and his life in Delhi. So when he saw me, he realised the prime minister had also come, and he knew that this gesture would end all talk of snapping ties and save the day.

And it did. Farooq was extremely touched by the prime minister's thoughtfulness at coming to his mother's funeral. The resolution controversy died, along with Begum Abdullah.

It did, however, plant the seed of doubt about Farooq Abdullah in the NDA government's mind, and possibly pushed Vajpayee into looking beyond Farooq for cutting the Gordian knot in Kashmir. While this seed was growing in his mind, I left R&AW and reached the PMO.

As Omar was Farooq's son and I was fond of him, I looked out for him. In the PMO I heard that the prime minister, during his next trip abroad, was taking such-and-such minister along. I went to Brajesh Mishra. 'Why don't you take Omar on one of these trips?' I said. 'He looks good and he's a Kashmiri. It gives him good exposure and it also sends a positive signal.'

Brajesh Mishra was agreeable and on the next trip, Omar went along. Then he went again. And again. Vajpayee had a chance to watch Omar from close quarters, and he struck him as a bright young fellow. The more Vajpayee and Brajesh Mishra saw Omar, the more they liked him. They moved him to the external affairs ministry, which was a sort of promotion, where he was the junior minister.

Another episode which solidified Vajpayee's positive feelings was a dinner that Omar hosted for the prime minister at his residence on Akbar Road. It was an exclusive dinner for the prime minister and his family: the PM was there, his foster daughter and Ranjan, Brajesh Mishra and myself; there was Omar, his wife Payal, Omar's in-laws and Farooq.

There was a high table at which everybody sat except Brajesh, Ranjan and I, who were drinking at the bar outside. It was a personal, private dinner, the PM with his family meeting Omar's in-laws, and reinforced positivity all around.

And the germ of the idea that Omar and Farooq should be switched, with Omar taking charge in Kashmir and Farooq settling down in Delhi, may have been planted during this time. Between the prime minister, Brajesh Mishra, and I'm sure Advani was involved in this, they decided to suggest Farooq Abdullah an inducement to leave Kashmir: they decided to offer to make him the Vice-President of India.

12.

VAJPAYEE'S 'BETRAYAL' OF

FAROOQ ABDULLAH.

These facts are well-known: in 2002, Vice-President Krishan Kant was on course to become the eleventh President of India. Such promotion to Rashtrapati Bhavan was a tradition and the six previous vice-presidents had gone on to become president. Vajpayee and Sonia Gandhi were agreeable to Kant's candidaturehe was one of the Congress party's original 'Young Turks' and later a member of the 19771980 Janata Party governmentand his name had been announced as such. Several members of the NDA government like Home Minister L.K. Advani, however, remembered that along with Madhu Limaye, Kant had been responsible for the fall of the Janata government over dual members.h.i.+p in the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). So they opposed Kant. Vajpayee then had to propose longtime civil servant and Tamil Nadu governor P.C. Alexander as the NDA's candidate, but the Congress vetoed the idea. Ultimately A.P.J. Abdul Kalam became president and proved to be the most popular one India has had. Two days after Kalam was sworn in, a broken-hearted Kant pa.s.sed away, the only vice-president to die in office. What is not widely known is that Vajpayee had offered Farooq Abdullah the vice-presidency. The offer was made when it was a.s.sumed that Kant was going to be the president. It made sense in the informal formula that politicians followed: to balance out the two high offices with either a north-south or a majority-minority combination.

The offer was made at my residence, by the prime minister's princ.i.p.al secretary and national security advisor Brajesh Mishra, later reaffirmed, according to Farooq, by the home minister, L.K. Advani, and of course the prime minister himself. Farooq was elated. His life ambition had been to one day become President of India, and this was the penultimate step to that goal.

It did not happen and it was the great tragedy of Farooq's life. It was a betrayal.

There were two ways of looking at it, of course. One is that it was an outright betrayal. Farooq has time and again been let down by various people in New Delhi. Such people have argued that Farooq is frivolous, that he is unreliable, that he can't be trusted, or that they just didn't like him. For instance, Narasimha Rao fantasised about sorting out the problem in Kashmir by looking beyond Farooq at Shabir Shah because Rao simply disliked Farooq. Recall that his only question to me before he left for Africa was whether or not Farooq was necessary for the revival of the political process.

If Vajpayee did not like Farooq it would be different from Narasimha Rao's distaste. After all, Vajpayee and Farooq had a lot in common. Vajpayee attended the opposition conclave that Farooq as chief minister organised in Srinagar in 1983. The two were also of a similar kind: the kind that loved fun and the good things in life. The irony is that Rao, in 1994, had a brainwave and deputed both Vajpayee and Farooq to Geneva, to an important meeting of the United Nations Commission for Human Rights, where India was under great pressure for its dealing with the movement in Kashmir. It was ironic that a man like Farooq, thought to be unreliable, was sent to defend the country at a UN forum.

Vajpayee, as we saw in the previous chapter, saw the autonomy resolution as a disappointment even if it was a compulsion for Farooq, who had come to power promising greater autonomy and would have to face an election the next year; for Vajpayee, who ran a coalition government, balancing his allies and his own Nehruvian instincts with the hardliners in his party was never easy, as the Gujarat riots in 2002 proved. The autonomy resolution only added to the pressures on Vajpayee. His not liking Farooq or thinking that Farooq was unreliable would have been linked to this episode. Or it was deep down dislike that came to the fore with this episode.

The other way of looking at the betrayal would be that Vajpayee, ever the Chanakya, played a bigger game when he offered Farooq the vice-presidency. He liked what he saw in Omar, and he wanted to switch the father-son combination by bringing Farooq to Delhi and putting Omar in Srinagar. It was a masterly political play. It whetted Omar's appet.i.te, and when Farooq's current term as chief minister ended he never became chief minister again, even though he was publicly willing to do so in 2008.

True, many people are offered high office and then circ.u.mstances prevent it from happening. With Farooq, however, many forces in Delhi worked against him, unfairly. I wonder if, as such people say, Farooq is unreliable then who the h.e.l.l in Kashmir is reliable?

Is it a coincidence that the one Kashmiri that Pakistan never tried to approachbecause he was too unpredictable, that is, he was too much his own manwas Farooq Abdullah? And that the person with the highest bounty on his head ever since militancy hit full stride was Farooq Abdullah?

Earlier in the book, it's been mentioned how Farooq made the introduction to hijacker Has.h.i.+m Qures.h.i.+; how Farooq came through with a favour for Syed Salahuddin, the Pakistan-based Hizbul Mujahideen preacher who has for long wanted to come back to India; and he introduced to the Rashtriya Rifles a rural folk-singer named Kuka Parrey, who went on to lead a force of counter-insurgents, the Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon, which was one of the army's successes. Farooq also was vehemently against releasing terrorists in his jails in exchange for hostages in both the Rubaiya kidnapping and the IC-814 hijacking, a position many have advocated as national policy. Farooq has never cited any of his actions that were of national security importance to make a case for himself, either privately or publicly. And yet he is called unreliable by vested interests in Delhi.

One of Farooq's defining moments could be Independence Day, 1989. He was the chief minister, Gen. K.V. Krishna Rao was the governor, and I was the IB man there. For just over a year, militancy had taken root and risen with bomb attacks and targeted killings. Because of the steadily increasing level of violence, it was a 15 August like no other. The ceremony was at the Baks.h.i.+ Stadium, and during the governor's speech we could hear bombs go off somewhere outside. Yet the governor kept speaking.

When Farooq's turn came he made a moving speech. Essentially what he said was that Kashmir was an integral part of India and that it was not going anywhere, it would remain a part of India. It may sound routine for those sitting outside of Kashmir, but at that time, when the tide for azaadi in Kashmir was building up, when the mood and atmosphere was such that no one would publicly speak on behalf of India, Farooq's speech stood out.

At that function the chief minister was to inspect the police guard of honour. The director-general of police, Ghulam Jeelani Pandit, had arranged a jeep to take Farooq from the podium, where the guests of honour sat and where the speeches were made, to the guard lined up further away. The idea was that with security at risk, Farooq would take the salute in the jeep and return to the podium. Yet when the jeep reached the guard, Farooq stopped the jeep and hopped out. He then did a better slow march than Pandit had done in inspecting the guard. It was impressive. That was Farooq.

Additionally, a few weeks later, in September, Farooq was at the Hazratbal shrine, built by his father Sheikh Abdullah not only to house the Moi-e-Muqqadas, a relic of the Prophet Mohammed, but as a base since the Jamia Masjid in downtown Srinagar was the base of the Mirwaiz and his pro-Pakistan supporters. Farooq looked at the crowd and he warned it against getting into militancy. 'Bahut bura hoga,' he told them. 'Barbadi laoge, tumhari ma-behene loot jayengi.' He warned them that violence would only bring ruin to Kashmir, and it was prescient. Yet no one listened.

The irony in all of this is that Farooq became chief minister because he was Delhi's preference. Mrs Indira Gandhi was anxious that he take over from his father, Sheikh Saheb. According to B.K. Nehru, the governor of J&K at the time, she even went and met Sheikh Saheb when he was ill and had not taken a decision on whether it ought to be his son-in-law, the political veteran Gul Shah, or his son, whom many believed to be non-serious. Farooq was a member of Parliament in Delhi and Mrs Gandhi apparently went and said, 'Sheikh Saheb, don't you think it's time we brought Farooq to Srinagar?'

Farooq, however, was not comfortable with the Nehru Gandhi family from the very beginning. If you take his family's point of view, the whole post-1947 relations.h.i.+p of Kashmir with New Delhi is one of lack of trust. Sheikh Abdullah, also known as Sher-e-Kashmir, led Kashmiris against Maharaja Hari Singh. When Independence came, Hari Singh was to choose between the two new countries, India and Pakistan, but he dithered and Pakistan tried to force the issue by sending in irregulars and troops in October 1947. This forced Hari Singh's hand, and he signed an Instrument of Accession to India with the last British viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, a.s.suring him it would be conditional on a plebiscite.

It suited Sheikh Abdullah to be part of India. He was close to Prime Minister Nehru and not to the founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, because of the differing philosophies of the two men, in a way a reflection of the philosophies of the new countries. Also, Kashmir enjoyed a special status within India, in charge of its own affairs except defence, foreign affairs and communications, with Sheikh Saheb as J&K's prime minister. For Nehru Kashmir was important as it would demonstrate to those Muslims who had not gone to Pakistan that India would take care of them.

But Nehru came under great pressure from those who came away from Part.i.tion believing that no one required any special guarantees. Thus there were a series of moves to erode the special status and make J&K like other states in the Union. Sheikh Saheb felt repeatedly betrayed, and in 1953 he was toppled and jailed. The promised plebiscite was never held. That there were trust issues is thus hardly surprising.

Sheikh Saheb was thrown into jail for a series of long stretches spanning twenty-three years. He went free only after he entered into the 1975 political accord with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He did so only when he saw India defeat Pakistan in war in 1971, leading to the division of Pakistan and the creation of a new country, Bangladesh. And he went ahead with the accord only after his son Farooq, who had qualified as a physician in England and had there married Mollie, went to Pakistan in 1974 and sounded out the leaders.h.i.+p; Zulfikar Ali Bhutto told him to go ahead, as Pakistan was in no position to help the Kashmiri cause for political justice.

What the 1975 accord also did was settle any doubts that Farooq may have had. Thus, from the beginning of his political career Farooq has consistently and repeatedly said that Kashmir's accession to India is final and irrevocable.

Before Sheikh Saheb died he had inducted Farooq into his cabinet, and so in 1983 Farooq became chief minister of J&K. They were heady days and one of the things that Farooq did was host an opposition conclave in Srinagar which got Indira Gandhi all worked up. The sad thing was that she and Delhi in general did not seem to see the positive side of this conclave, which was that if Indian opposition leaders were going to Kashmir and if Farooq was getting involved in such activity, it was only helping in the mainstreaming of Kashmir. And that has been India's number one priority and ultimate aim in Kashmir since it joined the Union in October 1947.

But Indira Gandhi did not see it that way. She wanted Farooq out. Her cousin, B.K. Nehruwho in his book Nice Guys Finish Second has pointed out that Farooq was the first nationalist to head J&K; his father was certainly not a nationalist, and the others who became chief ministers were simply opportunistsdid not play ball so she had him replaced with former bureaucrat Jagmohan. Jagmohan immediately dismissed Farooq, and this set the tone for Farooq's politics. Later, in his book, B.K. accused her of putting party and personal interests above the national interest.

The first I had heard of Farooq was when he entered into a political accord with Rajiv Gandhi in December 1986. I was on one of my a.s.signments as the security officer for a presidential visit to Belgrade, the capital of the erstwhile Yugoslavia. Someone brought Giani Zail Singh a copy of the Times of India and said: 'Dekho Gianiji, ki khabar aayi hai.'

The great news he wanted to tell the president was that Farooq and Rajiv had reached an accord. Gianiji being Gianiji said: 'This is the beginning of the end of Farooq Abdullah. He will meet the same fate as Longowal did in Punjab.'

Harcharan Singh Longowal, as mentioned in the first chapter, died within a month of signing the Punjab accord. While Gianiji was not saying that Farooq's death was imminent, what he was saying was this: as a regional party why would you want to hobn.o.b with the Congress? It was, in the estimate of the shrewd president, tantamount to political suicide and was no doubt one of the reasons that Kashmiris rejected mainstream politics for militancy a short while later.

I was transferred to Srinagar from Bhopal in 1988, and despite the entreaties by Arjun Singh, who had again in February 1988 become the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, I went ahead with my transfer to Srinagar. While I was going, the DIB, M.K. Narayanan, called me in and said: 'Please make sure that Dr Farooq is kept in good humour, that our relations.h.i.+p with him is okay and that he's on our side. Please see to that.'

I came out of the DIB's room and went to his special a.s.sistant, who also happened to be my friend, Ratan Sehgal. 'Ratan,' I said, 'I thought Farooq was a good guy from whatever I heard. Is there a problem?'

'No, I don't think so,' said Ratan. 'But Rajiv (Gandhi) is very keen that we have a good relations.h.i.+p with Farooq.'

That was basically my brief. The way that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi looked at it, Farooq was the key to Kashmir. It is surprising that this simple truth eluded others.

Ironically, in the years after the RajivFarooq accord, while I was in Srinagar, and while militancy gathered momentum, I did not see much bonhomie in the relations.h.i.+p between the two. I still recall that the two families, the Abdullahs and the Gandhis, went on a holiday together to s...o...b..und Gulmarg once the accord was done. There was a lot of fanfare: both were English-speaking, both had foreign wives, they got along famously. Yet there was uneasiness. I think Rajiv and Farooq were not in love with each other, and that they had a decent, civilised, gentlemanly working relations.h.i.+p. One reason this worked is that Narayanan went out of his way to make it happen.

Farooq, after the accord, whenever he came to Delhi, felt he wasn't getting time with the prime minister; that he couldn't meet the PM when he wanted to. On the other hand, Rajiv felt that there were others who could deal with the chief minister of J&K, and that's how the young, up-and-coming minister Rajesh Pilot came into play: Rajiv felt it would be enough to interact with Farooq through Pilot. But this att.i.tude would p.i.s.s Farooq off.

There was an occasion in 1988 when I got a message from the IB headquarters in New Delhi, saying, 'Your chief minister hasn't been to Delhi for a while and the home minister wants to know why the CM is avoiding him.' Buta Singh was the home minister.

'Buta Singh was remembering you,' I said to Farooq.

'Who the h.e.l.l is Buta Singh?' he exploded. 'Why would I want to meet him?'

'What happened?' I asked. 'What's the big deal?'

'When I go to Delhi and when I want to meet the prime minister, I'm kept waiting and I'm told he doesn't have time for me,' Farooq said. 'Why should I have time for your home minister?' He would eventually be mollified, but this was Gianiji's point: once a regional party hobn.o.bs with the Congress, it may not be a hostile relations.h.i.+p, but it will never be comfortable for the smaller partner.

I was first introduced to Farooq at a farewell party that the chief minister threw for my predecessor in Srinagar, K.P. Singh. More formally, though, I came to meet him in May 1988, when I took charge and I had to call on the chief minister.

It was not easy getting to Farooq, especially after my experience of meeting Arjun Singh whenever I wanted, or having had a good equation with President Zail Singh. For ten days nothing happened and I felt irritated. I inquired with my private secretary that I had asked for a meeting with the chief minister, so what happened? He said, 'Haan, saheb busy ho toh kai bar time bhi lag jaata hai.'

So I called up some colleagues, including the then advisor (home) to the state government, O.P. Bhutani, and the deputy inspector general (DIG) of the criminal investigation department (CID), M.N. Sabharwal. I told them I wanted to meet the CM but I wasn't getting to see him; I made it a point to say that I was coming from Madhya Pradesh where I got to meet Arjun Singh almost as soon as I wanted, and that he never kept me waiting. I was called home the following day.

I was wondering: how do you address the great man? Dr Abdullah? Chief minister? I asked Bhutani, who said Doctor Saheb is good enough. That sounded too much as if I was referring to him in the third person, so I usually called him 'Sir' and got away with it.

I arrived at his house on Gupkar Road and he walked out and shook my hand as if we were great buddies. He then said, 'Come on, get into the car. I'm going to Delhi.' He got in behind the driver's wheel, I got into the seat next to him, and the security detail in the car behind. And we drove to the airport.

Farooq loved driving, still does; he doesn't let anyone else drive. As he drove we spoke about a few things. The conversation was extremely pleasant, surprisingly so. This was the thing with Farooq: he could make you extremely comfortable (and when the time came, he could make you feel extremely uncomfortable). Once we reached the airport he said we'll continue this conversation when I return, and then he hopped onto his flight. His security guys dropped me back.

The trick to dealing with Farooq was to never tell him what he should do. Anyone who suggested or hinted that they could take him for granted would find out how wrong they were. Otherwise he was a great person to deal with. I never had a problem. He understood that I was the IB guy, and that if he could get a level playing field with Delhi through me, then what was the problem with talking to an IB guy?

Farooq always stressed on one thing: please report the truth to Delhi. He even said this publicly. In October 1988, the IB was celebrating its centenary, and as part of the celebrations, there were get-togethers in various outstations. Srinagar also had one such get-together where the DIB arrived with some officers from headquarters. We had the chief minister and the governor and some other ministers and people. It went off quite well. Farooq gave a speech and said the same thing: I expect the Intelligence Bureau to report correctly because otherwise you are doing a disservice to the country, to New Delhi, and to the government here, whatever it may be.

The IB had a sinister reputation in the Kashmiri mind. Part of it was because since Independence, the IB had basically been running Kashmir, advising the home ministry and reporting directly to the prime minister on whatever happened there. Nehru was particularly keen because he was ethnically a Kashmiri, and Kashmir had become a dispute with Pakistan in the United Nations. B.N. Mullik was quite active in Kashmir, and he mentioned as much in his memoir, hinting that he had a significant role to play in the 1964 recovery of the Moi-e- Muqqadas (there were riots in Kashmir when the relic disappeared).

If anyone in Kashmir had to abuse a political opponent, they would call him an IB agent.

The Abdullah family also felt that a lot of their problems were due to Kashmiri Pandits, who held disproportionately powerful positions in the government under Nehru and Indira Gandhi; the Abdullahs felt that Kashmiri Pandits carried lots of tales back to Delhi, and were thus highly untrustworthy. The IB, in J&K, had a fair amount of Kashmiri Pandits. One should not forget that when Sheikh Abdullah was arrested a conspiracy case was filed against him. It was put together by the IB. It went on for a number of years but nothing came of it. Thus, there was a feeling that these IB guys were up to no good. Sheikh Saheb even said once, I will see to it that these guys are packed off from here.

In my relations.h.i.+p with Farooq I think there was a distrust to begin with of Delhi and of the Intelligence Bureau. Over time, he figured that the IB was okay and that he could deal with it; his relations.h.i.+p with me also evolved naturally and it was fairly good though I couldn't claim that Farooq was a buddy of mine. There was a certain amount of respect; I saw a positive side of Farooq even though a lot of people were highly critical of him, all the time. But the way I saw it he was a leader of some standing, and without Farooq, there was no National Conference.

But not long after I took over, the first incident that defined the modern era in Kashmiri militancy happened, on 31 July 1988, when a bomb went off at the Srinagar Club, next to the Amar Singh club. Though Farooq always wanted to know from us what was going on, he always knew what was going on; he had numerous sources of information, which is not surprising considering how dominant his party, the National Conference, was in the Valley for all those years. And not long before this incident, Farooq told a public meeting in Anantnag that Kashmiris needed to be careful as things were getting bad. He said something near 100 militants had infiltrated into the Valley.

Immediately Delhi p.r.i.c.ked up its ears and asked me, where has your chief minister got these figures from? So I asked Farooq: 'Sir, you mentioned that 100 militants have come in.'

'Did I?' was his response. 'So what?'

'Sir,' I said, 'Delhi's asking.'

'So let them ask,' he said.

I went to the chief secretary, Moosa Raza. As it was, Moosa's time with Farooq was exciting because he just didn't understand Farooq and didn't know what to make of him.

'Sir,' I said to Moosa Raza, 'CM has said there are 100 militants here but we don't have any such information and now he's said this and Delhi's getting all excited.'