Do we like Omar Abdullah?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent record on the people side, held back by a bloody 2010 on his watch and a thin search on his wider views.
Omar Abdullah is Kashmiri political royalty: the grandson of Sheikh Abdullah and the son of Farooq Abdullah, born in 1970. He became the youngest member of the 12th Lok Sabha in 1998 at 28, then a junior union minister under Vajpayee. In 2009 he became the youngest chief minister the state had seen, serving until 2015.
His first term is where the heavy stuff lives. Al Jazeera reported that around 117 people, mostly young men, died in the 2010 protests, with police firing birdshot and live ammunition into crowds and the government criticised for excessive force. Activists also alleged excessive use of the Public Safety Act under his government.
What counts for something is that he has owned it. In 2020 he named the alleged rape and murder of two women in Shopian in 2009 and the 2010 unrest as the two things he regrets, saying “That continues to haunt me and always will.” That is not a clean slate, but it is not a shrug either.
On the harm test, we found nothing nasty. In December 2013, as chief minister, he tweeted against banning same-sex marriage, asking “How can a life style choice be illegal?” and saying people could take whatever stand their beliefs dictate. Fair warning: we did not turn up much on his record on vaccines or climate, so this is a pass on what we found.
Lately he has been in a stoush with the BJP and the opposition in Kashmir. In May 2026 he defended liquor outlets with “Who has forced anyone to drink?”, got hammered by the PDP, the BJP and his own colleague Aga Ruhullah Mehdi, and later called the comment a mistake. In July he claimed a BJP-linked figure had dangled money, a ministry and statehood at one of his MLAs, and the BJP answered with a defamation notice he called a “love letter”.
Where you land on the poaching row depends on whether you read it as a leader exposing an attempt to buy his MLAs or a chief minister making a serious claim without naming anyone. Nothing in what we read shows the BJP's notice has become a court case. It is a live political fight, not a finding against him.