Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on Saturday gave a sneak peak into his life update and shared photographs with journalist Nidhi Razdan on social media, where both were seen dressed in wedding attires.
“A new journey began yesterday,” Abdullah wrote in a post on X as he tagged Nidhi, and added a ring emoji. Nidhi also shared the same set of photographs from her social media and wrote, “It’s done bro.” She also added a ring emoji with the post.
Lately Nidhi was seen attending public events with Omar.
Omar was earlier married to Payal Nath in 1994 and has two sons – Zahir and Zamir – from his first marriage. However, the couple started living separately since 2009. Since then, Omar continued staying in J&K while his wife and sons remained in Delhi.
They were finally granted divorce by the Supreme Court in July this year after years of legal battle.
The divorce settlement came after the J&K CM challenged the December 12, 2023 judgment passed by the Delhi high court disputing his claim that his estranged wife Payal deserted him and this amounted to mental cruelty for obtaining a decree of divorce. The HC upheld the earlier order of a Delhi court in August 2016, which faulted him for not making out any ground for cruelty against his wife.
His plea was dismissed as the Delhi high court found the allegations of cruelty to be “vague”. It also found justification in the arguments made by the wife who claimed that she did not settle in Kashmir due to security concerns and the education of children, who were attending school in Delhi. On these grounds, even the trial court on August 30, 2016 refused to grant him divorce on grounds of cruelty.
Earlier, the high court had directed Omar to pay Payal a sum of ₹1.5 lakh every month as interim maintenance towards her expenses and ₹60,000 each to support the education of the two sons. However, the wife had sought to raise her interim maintenance, which the high court refused by a separate order passed in August 2023. This order was also carried in appeal before the top court.
