- Saturday, March 01, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
In an explosive interview, Satya Pal Malik, the last governor (2018-19) of erstwhile Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir which has now been made into a Union Territory, has said that prime minister Narendra Modi is “ill-informed” and “ignorant” about Kashmir and asked him to remain silent about the Indian home ministry’s lapses that led to a devastating terror attack on the country’s soldiers in Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir in February 2019.
Speaking to veteran journalist Karan Thapar for The Wire, the 76-year-old Malik also said “Mein safely keh sakta hoon Prime Minister ko corruption se bahut nafrat nahin hain” (I could say it safely that PM Modi has no real problem with corruption).
Speaking about the Pulwama incident that led to the death of 40 soldiers, Malik said the attack that took place on the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) was a result of “incompetence” by the Indian system and specifically the CRPF and the home ministry.
The Indian home ministry was then led by Rajnath Singh, the current defence minister, and it is now led by Amit Shah, the second-most powerful man in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after Modi.
Malik revealed in the interview how the home ministry refused the CRPF’s request for aircraft for transporting its personnel and that sanitisation of the route where the attack took place was not done properly.
The veteran leader, who last served as the governor of the northeastern state of Meghalaya, said while he had raised the lapses directly when the prime minister called him shortly after the attack, the latter asked him to stay quiet on the matter. He also said that national security adviser Ajit Doval had also asked him to remain silent. Malik said he immediately realised that the plan was to put the blame on Pakistan and make electoral gains for both the government and the party.
The attack took place just months before India’s general elections and Modi’s BJP swept the polls to return to power.
Speaking about the intelligence failure in Pulwama, Malik said the vehicle that was used in the attack was moving around the roads and villages of Jammu and Kashmir carrying huge explosives for 10-15 days after coming from Pakistan but was not detected.
He also said that the Modi government’s move to remove the statehood of Jammu and Kashmir was a mistake and that it should be restored immediately.
Malik also said that he was removed as the governor of the western state of Goa in August 2020 and shifted to Meghalaya since he had brought to Modi’s attention instances of corruption that the government ignored.
The former Jammu and Kashmir governor also alleged that the people around Modi are indulging in corruption and often use the name of the prime minister’s office. He said he had brought all of this to the prime minister’s attention but added that he did not seem to care.
