New Delhi: As Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on Monday (November 3) received a hero’s welcome and affection from Jammuites after his short – about 2 km-long – but politically-significant walk from his official residence on Jammu’s Residency Road to the Civil Secretariat, the irony wasn’t lost on anyone.

For it had taken a Kashmiri politician, as the first elected chief minister after the partial revocation of Article 370, to undo a significant decision of the BJP-led Union government to end the Darbar Move – a decades-old practice where the seat of power used to shift to relatively-warm Jammu during winters and to cooler Srinagar during the summers.

More significant was the praise and outpouring of greetings that the CM received from the business community in the heart of Jammu, which has been a BJP bastion for decades.

The lavish praise for the scion of the Abdullah dynasty was a far cry from the polarisation that was witnessed during the Assembly elections, where the BJP almost swept the Hindu-dominated Jammu region while the National Conference and its ally, the Congress won majority of the seat in the Kashmir province.

Monday's event also proved, once again, how unpopular and ill-advised the decision to end the practice of Darbar Move was. The business community of Jammu, even though, they remained solidly with the BJP, was critical of its end since it had severely affected their businesses during the months that the Darbar Move employees used to shift to Jammu – many of them families in tow, to escape the harsh winters of Kashmir.

Incidentally, when this reporter toured the erstwhile state-turned-union territory in August last year for a series of reports on the fifth anniversary of the Article 370 decision, one of the main demands of the Jammu business community, which had once hailed the scrapping of the Darbar Move as “historic”, was to restore the practice.

Former chief minister and Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti had also told this reporter then that the restoration of Darbar Move should happen to save Jammu’s businesses.

“Of course, (the) Darbar Move must be started soon. Not for Kashmir but to save Jammu’s businesses. From being an economic hub earlier, Jammu is now facing ruination. The central government must see the writing on the wall and restore the Darbar Move,” Mufti had said.

During the same visit, senior Jammu-based journalist Manu Shrivatsa had also pointed to the fact that the Darbar Move, apart from the symbolism, had a strong financial value for the people of Jammu city.

“They (people of Jammu) possibly didn’t realise this when they were all gung-ho about the move to stop this practice. Now, they realise it was (a) misconceived decision. But they can’t do anything now. In a way, they have brought it upon themselves,” he had said.

After Abdullah’s show on Monday, Shrivatsa says he wasn’t surprised to see the welcome. 

“Jammuites were yearning for it. The only problem is that having voted for the BJP, they didn’t know how to demand it more loudly. The Chief Minister seems to have heard the unsaid. Good for Jammu,” he says.

Incidentally, among the first ones to greet the chief minister yesterday was Jammu Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Arun Gupta, younger brother of late BJP stalwart and former Union minister, Chaman Lal Gupta. 

“It was a stupid decision [to end Darbar Move]. The chief minister has earned the gratitude of Jammu people for restoring what our own party had stopped,” said another BJP MLA, who did not wish to be named.

Farooq Abdullah tried it first to win over Jammu. By walking down the narrow roads of central Jammu, Omar was only trying to emulate his father. 

Ever since the early 1940s, when Sheikh Abdullah, Omar’s grandfather, re-christened the Muslim Conference to a more-secular sounding National Conference, it has been a difficult journey for the National Conference leadership, especially Farooq Abdullah, to make the party more acceptable to the Hindus of Jammu.

For several decades, the party had only one or two Hindu leaders in its fold – the late Bodh Raj Bali and Rattan Lal Gupta, both not exactly mass elders though loyal to the leadership and the party.

The limited turnaround – if it can be called that – happened when Farooq Abdullah became chief minister for the fourth time in 1996. On several evenings, he could be found sitting at the counter of Chuni Lal Amarnath, a prominent dry fruits shop in Raghunath Bazar, Jammu.

Possibly understanding the importance of mending bridges with Jammu, Farooq Abdullah, effusive and warmth personified, would interact with passing locals as well as Mata Vaishno Devi pilgrims, for whom a tour of the busy Raghunath Bazaar, Kanak Mandi – the local wholesale hub then, Residency Road and Link Road – was part of the trip. 

Notably, this was the time when outsiders coming to pay obeisance at the Mata Vaishno Devi did not have the luxury of taking a direct train to Katra.

Sometimes, Farooq would even playfully scold the local business people for “overcharging”, requesting them to offer discounts to the visitors from other states.

It was only due to such steps that NC made inroads into the hearts and minds of Jammuites, leading to more Hindu MLAs, like Ajay Sadhotra and Surjit Singh Salathia, joining the party. While Sadhotra continues to be with the NC, Salathia is now a BJP MLA from the same seat that he first won as a NC candidate. 

In fact, during the recently-held Rajya Sabha elections, Sadhotra was among those expected to get the party mandate. He, however, lost out at the last minute.

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