Omar now in elite company, says Farooq Abdullah

Union Minister Farooq Abdullah today said his son, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, has joined "an elite club" after a police constable hurled a shoe at him during the Independence Day function in Srinagar.

Union Minister Farooq Abdullah on Monday said his son, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, has joined "an elite club" after a police constable hurled a shoe at him during the Independence Day function in Srinagar.

HT Image

"He has joined an elite club of former US president George W Bush, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zadari, Home Minister P Chidambaram and a few others with the shoe (throwing incident). It is a wonderful thing," the senior Abdullah told reporters outside Parliament House.

A suspended police head constable hurled a shoe at the chief minister during the Independence Day function in Srinagar on Sunday. The police department suspended 15 of their men, including four officers, after the incident for the security breach.

Chidambaram, Zardari, Bush and Chinese premier Wen Jiabao have faced similar shoe protests in the past few years.

His lighter vein of the comment apart, Farooq Abdullah, the union minister for new and renewable energy, blamed the shoe incident on his son's security apparatus.

He said it was a lapse on part of Omar's security apparatus. "It is nalayak (incompetent)," he said.

The chief minister has faced sharp criticism for his handling of the latest round of violence in the Kashmir Valley during which over 55 people have been killed, mostly in firing by security forces, since June 11.