Memories of Three Chief Ministers and a Life in Public Service
By: Farooq Ahmad Khan
Looking back at a long career in public service, some memories survive not because of the positions one held, but because of the trust that was unexpectedly placed in one at critical moments. I had the privilege of serving in different capacities during the tenures of three Chief Ministers of Jammu and Kashmir—Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, Dr. Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah. My encounters with them came at very different stages of my career, but there was a common thread running through them: trust invariably brought with it responsibility.
My first such encounter came when I was only twenty-four.
In 1980, soon after I took over as Company Secretary of the Jammu and Kashmir State Forest Corporation, the Corporation's truck drivers went on strike. The erstwhile Government Lumbering Undertaking had been converted into a corporation, and the drivers feared that this change would deprive them of their status as government employees and, consequently, of pensionary benefits.
The agitation gathered momentum. The drivers stopped work and went to the Civil Secretariat at Jammu to meet the then Chief Minister, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah.
At our Bahu Fort office, a call came from the Chief Minister's Private Secretary: the Managing Director had been asked to meet Sheikh Sahib at 11 a.m. sharp. Our Managing Director, Mr. Nazir Ahmad Masoodi, was away on tour to Rajouri. Some senior officers of General Manager rank were available, but understandably hesitated to substitute for the Managing Director before the Chief Minister.
As Company Secretary, I became the next choice.
For a twenty-four-year-old officer, it was an opportunity as much as a challenge. I reached the Civil Secretariat and entered the office of a leader whose name was inseparable from the political history of Jammu and Kashmir.
I greeted Sheikh Sahib with Assalam-u-Alaikum. He offered me a seat and came directly to the point:
“Why are the drivers on strike?”
I explained that the Government had nationalised forest working in the larger public interest and that the private forest lessees, whose interests were directly affected, were unhappy with the decision. I submitted that their hand behind the agitation could not be ruled out, since they had every reason to resist the Forest Corporation taking over timber extraction and transportation.
Sheikh Sahib listened carefully. He explained that forest working had been nationalised with a twin objective: to earn revenue for the Government from the exploitation of forest resources and, at the same time, to reinvest in the development and regeneration of forests.
Then, in my presence, he spoke over the intercom to his Finance Minister, D. D. Thakur, and told him, in substance, to send the drivers back and ask them to resume work. It became apparent to me that the striking employees had met Sheikh Sahib shortly before me and had been referred to the Finance Minister. Our discussion had apparently given him another perspective on the agitation.
Before I left, Sheikh Sahib graciously asked whether there was anything else I wished to say.
Perhaps only a twenty-four-year-old would have seized such an opportunity so readily. I told him that I needed suitable government accommodation.
He immediately asked his Principal Secretary to write to the Works Minister for allotment of accommodation to me. The direction was prompt; the accommodation, however, never came.
That little anti-climax has remained part of the memory.
Nearly two decades later, responsibility came to me in a very different form.
In September 1997, I was posted as Managing Director of the Jammu and Kashmir Cable Car Corporation. The Government had an urgent objective. The first National Winter Games were proposed to be held at Gulmarg, and the long-pending Gulmarg Gondola project, which had been started in 1990, had to be made operational before the Games. The scheduled inauguration of the event was First March, 1998. For me, therefore, the real deadline was not 1st March—it was any day before it.
Dr. Farooq Abdullah, then Chief Minister, visited Gulmarg in the first week of December. I assured him that the Gondola would be commissioned very shortly. His reaction remains etched in my memory. Visibly delighted, he turned towards the Qibla, raised both hands and prayed:
“May Allah bless you and your family.”
He had travelled from the Gulmarg Club to the Gondola premises on a snow scooter. Before leaving, he handed me its keys. After lunch with me and my colleague, B. Jamali, General Manager, at Hotel Highlands Park, he returned to the Club.
As the deadline approached, Dr. Farooq Abdullah made another visit, this time landing by helicopter at Kongdoori, where the first phase of the Gondola terminated. Accompanied by his security officer, Mr. Baba, he had evidently come to reassure himself that the project would indeed be ready.
I received him and showed him the progress of the work.
By then, I had not left the Gondola site for more than two months. Gulmarg had virtually become my home. After satisfying himself about the progress, the Chief Minister prepared to return to Srinagar. Unexpectedly, he asked me to accompany him in his helicopter.
After more than two months at the project site, I suddenly found myself flying home to Srinagar with the Chief Minister. It was my first helicopter ride—and remains my only one. Public service sometimes gives rewards that never find mention in a service book.
The Gulmarg Gondola was successfully commissioned on 28th Feberuary 1998. The following day, Prime Minister I. K. Gujral declared the First National Winter Games open. The event gave Gulmarg and winter tourism in Kashmir a new visibility.
Success, however, has its own companions.
Soon, apprehensions began to be circulated about the safety of the Gondola. Some officers associated with tourism also appeared to have been influenced by these reports. Disturbed by the controversy, Dr. Farooq Abdullah convened a high-level meeting at the Civil Secretariat in Srinagar.
He candidly stated that serious apprehensions were being expressed about the safety of the Gondola and asked me to explain my position.
I submitted that much of the propaganda originated from those who feared that the Gondola would affect the traditional pony business at Gulmarg and that, unfortunately, some officers had also become influenced by these apprehensions. I assured the meeting that all prescribed safety guidelines and operational protocols were being observed.
Then I went a step further.
“Sir,” I said in substance, “let it be recorded that if anything untoward happens on account of any lapse in safety, I shall be personally responsible.”
There was a pause.
Dr. Farooq Abdullah raised his hands and said that he had complete trust in my word. With that, he brought the meeting to an end.
For an officer, there can hardly be a heavier compliment. Trust of that kind does not lighten responsibility; it multiplies it.
I remained associated with the Gondola management for about seven years over my two tenures. By the grace of Almighty, the apprehensions expressed in that meeting did not materialise.
My third set of memories belongs to another generation.
After completing my second tenure as Managing Director of the Cable Car Corporation, I was posted as Deputy Commissioner, Doda, in 2010. Doda was an important and challenging district, and its development received attention at the highest levels. Omar Abdullah, as Chief Minister, would visit the district and interact with representatives of different political parties.
During one such visit in 2011, I received him as Deputy Commissioner. In the meeting hall, delegations of political parties met the Chief Minister separately, each accompanied by its own representatives.
Something unusual happened.
Whatever their political differences, the first demand made by leaders across parties was substantially the same: Farooq Ahmad Khan should continue as Deputy Commissioner and should not be transferred.
At another similar meeting, the demand was repeated, this time even more emphatically.
During one of these occasions, Omar Abdullah also released my Kashmiri poetry book, Poshi Daswan. For a brief moment, the administrator and the writer in me occupied the same room.
After one of the Chief Minister's successful tours of Doda, I received a friendly telephone call from Sheikh Mushtaq Ahmad, then Secretary in the General Administration Department. He told me about an observation Omar Abdullah had reportedly made at a meeting of officers in Jammu. The Chief Minister had remarked, in substance, that whenever he visited districts, one of the first demands he usually encountered was for the Deputy Commissioner to be changed. Doda, he said, was the exception: there, the demand was that the Deputy Commissioner should be retained.
Mushtaq Sahib congratulated me.
I valued that observation particularly because it did not originate from an assessment report or a confidential file. It reflected what people and their representatives, cutting across political affiliations, had conveyed to the Chief Minister.
Then life intervened in a painful way.
In 2012, my younger brother, Syed Khan, a gold medallist in law, died in a road accident. Omar Abdullah telephoned to convey his condolences. My parents were shattered by the tragedy, and during that conversation I requested the Chief Minister to transfer me from Doda back to Kashmir so that I could remain closer to them. He assured me that he would consider the request.
Before any transfer order could be issued, however, I received a call from Ghulam Nabi Azad Sahib. He told me that Omar Abdullah had asked him to suggest a suitable officer who could replace me at Doda because I had sought a transfer. Azad Sahib said that he had advised the Chief Minister to allow me to continue for another year and had undertaken to speak to me himself.
His advice was simple: continue, and do not repeat the request.
I did.
I remained in Doda until March 2013, when I was posted as Director, Social Welfare, Kashmir—another assignment, with another set of challenges waiting for me.
Today, when I recall these incidents, what stays with me is not merely that I had occasions to interact with three Chief Ministers belonging to three generations. Positions pass, governments change and official designations eventually become lines in a résumé.
What remains is something less tangible.
At twenty-four, I walked somewhat unexpectedly into Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah's office and was given a patient hearing. Years later, Dr. Farooq Abdullah placed his faith in an assurance I gave about a project carrying considerable public responsibility. Still later, during Omar Abdullah's tenure, political representatives who disagreed on almost everything else found themselves agreeing that their Deputy Commissioner should stay.
These were very different moments, involving very different personalities and circumstances. I remember them not as badges of proximity to power, but as reminders of what public service at its best demands.
Trust is gratifying when it is received.
But the moment it is placed in you, trust becomes responsibility.
Farooq Ahmad Khan is a retired civil servant and presently practises as an Advocate before the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh at Srinagar. He can be reached at: advofarooqahmadkhan@gmail.com.
