Sir,

This is with reference to your Abracadabra column in SOM dated Apr. 23, 2025. While you flatter me by posting my photograph, I am constrained to point out some inaccuracies in reporting my remarks to a TV channel on 23.4.2025.

I made several remarks in that talk that there could be intelligence failure and, more importantly, security failure, as there were reportedly no Policemen or Rashtriya Rifles jawans in an area where hundreds of tourists had gathered in the Baisaran meadows of Pahalgam in Srinagar.

I attributed these two failures to the Central agencies, as they come under the Home Minister and the Defence Minister. In this context, I spoke of ‘Sleeper Cells’ in the Valley that have existed for several decades and said that neutralising them is a responsibility of the State Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, by mobilising public opinion against the terrorists. 

We must all understand that since the division and downgrading of the State of J&K into two Union Territories (J&K and Ladakh) in October 2019, the powers of the Chief Minister have been sharply curtailed.

Now all the Police force, the State security apparatus, the IAS, IPS Officers and even the Officers of the State Service all directly report to the Lt. Governor and through him to the Home Minister. The State CM does not have the power even to transfer a Police Constable from one Station to another.

So my remarks that you have so prominently highlighted do give an impression that you are trying to deflect all responsibility for this attack from the Central government, particularly the Home Minister and the Lt. Governor, who are in complete control of all the Law and Order agencies. That was not my intention.

– Ravi Joshi  , Mysuru, 24.4.2025

Note: The correspondent may please see the penultimate para of the fourth column of my article, where I have mentioned an opinion, “that there was a security lapse on the part of the intelligence service, Rashtriya Rifles, Army and the local Police.”

All these forces, it is evident, do not come under the control of the State Government, as Ravi Joshi affirms in the letter, including the Police, J&K being a Union Territory.

I fail to understand how mere journalistic highlighting of his statement tantamounts to my trying to “deflect” the responsibility of the Union government and the persons he has mentioned. I have not said anything about his “intention” unless a presumption is made, nor did I have any intention to impute any motive to what he said. — K.B. Ganapathy