Omar Abdullah and his deputy Surinder Choudhary on Tuesday launched a no-holds-barred attack on lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha, with the chief minister seeking to fix responsibility over the Pahalgam attack and the deputy chief minister asking Sinha to apologise for the alleged police manhandling of his boss.
Omar, reacting to an interview of Sinha where he termed the Pahalgam attack a grave security lapse and took personal responsibility, said someone had to be held responsible for the intelligence failure that killed 26 people.
The chief minister said such a big-scale attack could not have occurred without a serious breakdown in the system. "We know there must have been a failure. Otherwise, such a big attack would not have happened," he said.
"One thing is, first acknowledge the failure and after that (find out) who is responsible for the failure. So if intelligence had a failure, then who is responsible for it? It cannot be that 26 people lost their precious lives, and after that, there is no progress from our side," he said.
On Monday's incident, where he was allegedly manhandled by the police for trying to enter the martyrs' graveyard, Omar said such a thing "should not have happened". Choudhary asked Sinha to apologise for what he called "physical manhandling" of Omar.
The LG's administration on Sunday thwarted attempts by Kashmiri politicians to revive the commemoration of the July 13 Martyrs' Day by placing them under house arrest to prevent a gathering at the Mazar-e-Shohada, the graveyard in the old city.
Omar's stature as chief minister offered him no shield against the security establishment led by Sinha on Monday, which treated him like a street protester to prevent him from visiting the graveyard. Choudhary said the incident was an "insult to democracy and the mandate given by the people".