Srinagar, Sept 23 (KNO): Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Wednesday said education and healthcare must remain the top priorities of the Jammu and Kashmir Government to enable children from the Union Territory to compete at national and international levels.
Addressing students at the ALOHA National Level Competition (NLC)-2026 at the Sher-i-Kashmir International Convention Centre (SKICC) in Srinagar, the Chief Minister, as per the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), praised the performance of participating children, particularly their ability to solve complex arithmetic problems mentally.
“Today, these children have really made me feel ashamed. If you had given me a calculator, I would not have been able to find the answers as quickly as they did,” Omar said.
Recalling his own school days, the Chief Minister said mathematics had been a difficult subject for him and that merely passing it had been a significant achievement. “I know how many times I had to study it. What I saw from these children today makes me feel that whatever they choose to do, they will succeed in it. May Allah give them more success,” he said.
Omar said children today face far greater distractions than previous generations, with multiple television channels, mobile phones and other digital platforms competing for their attention.
“In our time, we did not have so much competition for the attention of children. We had hardly one channel on television. Today, when you have 30, 40 or 50 channels and then a phone to turn to, keeping a child interested in one thing is very difficult,” he said.
He credited parents and teachers for helping children reach a level where they could compete successfully at national-level events.
The Chief Minister said education and healthcare form the foundation of development, stressing that other investments would have limited value without progress in these two sectors.
“The biggest responsibility for the government is to pay attention to these two things and how we improve the education system and how we improve the health system. Only then can our children compete not just at the national level but at the international level,” he said.
Omar also highlighted the need to improve student retention in Jammu and Kashmir, saying the region performs well at the primary and middle-school levels but witnesses a decline in retention as students move to high and higher secondary classes.
He said strengthening retention was essential to safeguarding the future of children in J&K.
The Chief Minister also called for greater cooperation between government and private schools, saying children should not be viewed differently on the basis of the institution they attend.
“This is not a competition between a private school and a government school. The children are ours, whether they study in a government school or a private school, and they are the future of Jammu and Kashmir,” he said.
He said the government is working to simplify procedures for private schools, particularly by reducing hurdles and delays related to permissions and approvals.
He said efforts are also underway to simplify processes in school and higher education, adding that the government had passed a bill for private universities to provide students with greater opportunities to pursue higher education within Jammu and Kashmir.
The Chief Minister stressed the need to prepare students for emerging fields, including artificial intelligence, by incorporating new developments into the curriculum and syllabus.
Referring to the ALOHA competition, Omar said the participation of children from different parts of Jammu and Kashmir, other states and abroad was encouraging.
“Children from remote areas of Jammu and Kashmir, along with participants from Karnataka, Rajasthan and other parts of the world, have travelled to Kashmir to be part of this competition. It gives us a lot of hope,” he said.
He said the participation and performance of students demonstrated the potential for stronger collaboration between schools, students and ALOHA in the coming years.
Omar also praised the enthusiasm of the participants, saying he had rarely seen the SKICC hall filled with so many young awardees.
“You are all winners, whether you took back a trophy from here or not. Just being here and being able to compete is a victory,” he said, congratulating the students, parents and teachers.
The Chief Minister further said the government would examine the possibility of introducing mental arithmetic and similar initiatives in government schools to provide students with a level playing field. “Today, what I saw makes me believe that the future of Jammu and Kashmir will be very bright,” Omar said.—(KNO)