Opposition will try to counter government on Kashmir

New Delhi: After the presidential election, Kashmir is the next big issue on which the Opposition is trying to evolve a common stand, hoping to corner the government. Many Opposition parties, including the Congress, are holding parleys among themselves to chalk out a strategy, in view of the government’s failure to find a way out in Kashmir, which has seen a spurt in violence recently. Former J&K chief minister Farooq Abdullah met Prime Minister Narendra Modi here on Tuesday and pressed him to open a dialogue with the Kashmiri people.

Sources said the parties feel the government could be cornered for having mishandled the situation in Kashmir as the situation there was “very alarming”. Senior JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav, who is leading this initiative, told this newspaper: “Any solution to the violence there can only come from Delhi. The situation is very alarming. In the three years since the BJP government came to power, the situation has deteriorated so much that they are not able to hold a byelection.”

Mr Yadav, who was part of an all-party team that visited J&K in 2016, said he held a wide range of discussions with all parties and many civil society activists to find a way out so that the people of Kashmir could be told there was an alternative viewpoint to that of the government. He said he had talked about this with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who told him a Congress cell headed by former PM Manmohan Singh was already working on it.

Subsequently, Mr Yadav met Dr Singh and others in the Congress cell, including P. Chidambaram, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Karan Singh. He had also met CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and CPI leader D. Raja.

“I also met senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha twice. We are exploring options on how to take on the government over the issue. On one hand they talk about ‘Akhand Bharat’ and on the other the situation in the state is such that people have virtually rejected the Constitution of the country,” he said.

Mr Sinha headed a team of “concerned citizens” which has visited the Valley twice.

Sources said the parties may hold an all-party conclave next month in the buildup to the presidential election, for which the Opposition parties have decided to put up a candidate.

Dr Abdullah, who met the Prime Minister for the first time after being re-elected to the Lok Sabha from Srinagar, urged Mr Modi to take urgent steps to tackle the problem in Kashmir. He said it was not merely a law and order problem in the Kashmir Valley, which has seem spiralling violence with students holding protests. Several students were arrested in the clashes in Srinagar and elsewhere in the Valley.