"The party needs a young and energetic person at the helm of affairs. It's time for me to rest. Omar will be the next National Conference president," longtime National Conference President Farooq Abdullah had announced at an April 2002 meeting of the party's working committee before the Jammu & Kashmir Assembly elections were held that year. It was only seven years later that the father's wish came true. On 5 January 2009, at 38 years of age, Omar Abdullah became the youngest chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir.
Despite their continued political prominence, the past decade has been a rocky ride for the Abdullahs. At the national level, in 2002 Farooq Abdullah's hopes of being nominated for a vice-presidential term by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) – which then included the National Conference – were dashed. Back in Kashmir, in the assembly elections the same year, Omar Abdullah even lost his seat from the family bastion of Ganderbal. In the meantime, the People's Democratic Party (PDP), created by the Abdullahs' longtime bête noire, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, won 16 seats and formed a coalition with the Congress party to rule J & K. The National Conference was thus forced to assume the role of opposition, for which it was particularly unprepared.
The next six years were a challenge. Omar sought to reshape the party's discourse, trying to reposition it by identifying it more clearly with the sentiments of the people of J & K. The 2004 winter session of the Assembly proved to be a turning point for the National Conference, as it effectively raised issues such as the increasingly endemic human-rights violations. Alongside, the party took care to be mindful of the sensitivities of New Delhi, and accordingly nuanced its political stance. A decisive moment came last year, with Omar's impassioned speech against the no-confidence vote against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government (a vote that was subsequently defeated). At that point, he admitted to regretting having been a part of the communal NDA, a position that inevitably brought him closer to the Congress party.
During the 2008 assembly elections, the National Conference won a total of 28 seats, the same number it won in 2002. This time around, however, the political scenario was significantly different. No longer politically untouchable, the Congress party decided to form a coalition with the National Conference rather than with the PDP, a decision that seems to have been clinched by Omar Abdullah's no-nonsense image. This stood in sharp contrast to his father Farooq, whose political blunders are thought to have contributed substantially to the insurgency that began in 1989.