Srinagar: Omar Abdullah, who was sworn in as the first Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory on Wednesday, had once been a part of a Hindi film, making a debut on the big screen in 2008.
Omar, who is the Vice President of the National Conference Party and former junior foreign minister in the Atal Behari Vajpayee cabinet, played himself in the Bollywood flick Mission Istanbul, starring Suniel Shetty, Shriya Saran, Vivek Oberoi, and Zayed Khan, among others.
It features an interview with Omar regarding the media's role in reporting Kashmir. The Apoorva Lakhia-directed film explores terrorism and its global expansion.
In a small scene, he is asked by a reporter, played by Shriya Saran in the film, for his views on the media's role in reporting Kashmir. Omar replies, "In Kashmir, good news is not news. Unless a bomb goes off, unless somebody is killed, it is not news.”
"So many good things are happening [in Kashmir]. For instance, tourists are coming. But all this is not reported the way terrorism and violence are being reported," he says, as part of dialogues, dubbed by an artist for the film.
Speaking to media that year, the 54-year-old leader had said he was reading the lines as part of the script, which was "strange," saying, "I am used to saying what I feel, what I think. But here I had to repeatedly read from a script.”
Omar said that Lakhia was a classmate and that he couldn’t decline the request to act in the film from the director.
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