On the campaign trail in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir last year, ahead of the union territory’s first legislative election in a decade, Omar Abdullah made a crowd of supporters emotional as he removed his skullcap. “My turban, my honor, and this cap are in your hands,” he said. “Give me an opportunity and I will serve you and represent you.”
In October 2024, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference party (JKNC) won 42 seats in the territory’s 90-member legislative assembly, and Abdullah returned to office as chief minister—a role he held from 2009 to 2015. Five years had passed since the Indian government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), abrogated Article 370 of its constitution, revoking Jammu and Kashmir’s limited autonomy and transforming it from a locally administered state into a union territory directly governed by the central government.
In the aftermath, the Indian government argued that the situation in Kashmir was too unstable to hold legislative elections. When the time for elections finally came last year, Abdullah campaigned on 12 sweeping reforms, anchored in the restoration of the region’s special constitutional status. He promised full statehood, the protection of land and employment rights for residents, and the revocation of the controversial Public Safety Act, among other assurances.
Voters seemed to see the JKNC as the only party with the strength to safeguard local interests. The general sentiment, amplified by Abdullah’s party, was that the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party (PDP) facilitated the entry of the BJP into the region’s government a decade ago, ultimately leading to the abrogation of Article 370. After local election victories in December 2014, a PDP-BJP government succeeded the JKNC in 2015; the memory of that coalition, which collapsed in 2018, likely helped turn the tide for the JKNC last year.
But more than a year after the 2024 election, Abdullah faces significant criticism, and his image on the campaign trail seems like a magician’s trick. His leadership has been defined by his inability to convert bold commitments into visible outcomes. Abdullah blames the JKNC’s inaction on its limited legislative power within the union territory government, as well as on New Delhi’s delay in restoring statehood to the region, which Modi pledged in September 2024. Though this structural imbalance is largely out of the JKNC’s hands, it has exposed an absence of assertive leadership.
Abdullah and the JKNC have left key pledges unfulfilled, starting with Abdullah’s promise to provide 100,000 jobs to young Kashmiris. Jammu and Kashmir’s youth unemployment rate in 2024-25 stood at 17.4 percent, far above India’s 10.2 percent overall. Such failures already seem to have tangible consequences: In elections for four seats in the upper house of India’s Parliament in October, the JKNC won only three seats, losing one to the BJP. Then in a November special election for seats in the Jammu and Kashmir legislature, the JKNC lost the Budgam assembly seat—which the party had held since 1957, except for in 1972 when it boycotted the polls—to a first-time PDP candidate.
Since the revocation of Article 370, Abdullah and the JKNC have primarily relied on one political strategy, consistently falling back on the line, “If you are not with us, you are with the BJP.” JKNC is the region’s oldest and largest party, standing against the monarchy of Jammu and Kashmir beginning in the 1930s. Its founder, Sheikh Abdullah—Omar Abdullah’s grandfather—was imprisoned for two decades before coming to power as chief minister in 1975 following an accord with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
However, to opponents, this legacy seems to lend the JKNC’s leaders a sense of entitlement. Adnan Ashraf Mir, a former spokesperson for the People’s Conference party, said that although all parties in Jammu and Kashmir—including the JKNC—have allied with the BJP at some point, Abdullah’s party has perfected the art of portraying itself as the sole crusader against the national party.
“The entire political spectrum in Kashmir has made the BJP the central focus of its politics,” Mir said. “Even the opposition parties, when they criticize the [JK]NC government, they do so by linking it to the BJP. There is no concerted effort to critique the [JK]NC on governance, unemployment, or [affirmative action] issues.”
Since Abdullah returned to power, critics have accused him of arrogance and appeasement, suggesting that he has chosen political amnesia over substantive reform in Jammu and Kashmir. In turn, the JKNC’s popularity appears to be diminishing.
In November, protests erupted in Abdullah’s own constituency in response to perceived backtracking on a promise to provide households with 200 free units of electricity per month. A video clip of the chief minister daring New Delhi to attempt to install smart electricity meters before election, paired with a clip of him urging installation of the same meters after election, went viral. Opposition parties jumped on the opportunity to call out hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, the JKNC is losing support from some of its own members. Last year, senior JKNC leader and member of the Indian Parliament Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi joined hundreds of students protesting against a policy that expanded affirmative action quotas for students and job seekers in Jammu and Kashmir to more than 60 percent—which critics say disadvantages merit-based applicants. Despite widespread anger, Abdullah’s government has not yet changed the so-called reservation policy; Mehdi has given the government a Dec. 20 deadline to amend it before he rejoins the protests.
Perhaps most significantly, Abdullah’s critics also say that he has failed to project the political will expected of a chief minister navigating the post-2019 landscape—despite his rhetoric on the campaign trail. Instead of challenging national administrative overreach or building strong public connections, Abdullah has shirked responsibility, reinforcing the perception that his government is disengaged.
“Omar Abdullah could have chosen a different path—he could have engaged in more assertive political posturing,” said Altaf Hussain Para, the author of The Making of Modern Kashmir: Sheikh Abdullah and the Politics of the State. “Perhaps he miscalculated, hoping that reconciliation and cooperation with the center would earn him some administrative space. But that strategy didn’t work either.” Para also acknowledged the JKNC’s failure to innovate or work in concert with New Delhi to at least achieve local governance milestones.
“Our core promise in the elections was that the JKNC would actively fight for the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and rights taken away in 2019,” Mehdi, the JKNC member of Parliament, told Foreign Policy. “Yet there has been no real democratic effort from the government through the assembly or other institutions.”
The JKNC has maintained that it can’t take an aggressive stance against New Delhi, relying instead on the passive hope that Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood might eventually be restored. The bravado of the campaign trail has dissipated; now, the party largely avoids discussing sensitive matters such as the specific restoration of Article 370. “We were hopeful that the central government would fulfill its promise of statehood for Jammu and Kashmir within the first year,” Abdullah said in a press briefing in October. “We still believe that the solution to all of Jammu and Kashmir’s problems lies in restoring statehood.”
Mehbooba Mufti, the president of the PDP and a former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, told Foreign Policy that the Abdullah government has capitulated to the status quo and failed to take a firm stand on critical issues. “[The JKNC] seems more focused on avoiding confrontation with Delhi than on delivering on its promises to the people,” she said.
Abdullah’s promises to restore autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir ring hollow as his government exhibits complacency and ignores public sentiment. So far, his political record reflects a prioritization of his own political survival over true change—but the public is losing patience, as is clear from the Budgam election results. Unless Abdullah and the JKNC change course, Kashmir will remain mired in frustration, intensifying instability.