Back-channel talks to start with Hurriyat

The underlying theme of the Friday’s all-party meeting convened by the Centre is likely to stress on a dialogue with all stakeholders, including exploring the possibility of opening lines of communication with the separatists in a bid to contain the ongoing turbulence in the Valley.

Government sources told this newspaper that even J&K chief minister Mehbooba Mufti had stressed the need to initiate a dialogue process with various Valley outfits, including the Hurriyat, at her meeting with home minister Rajnath Singh on Monday. The CM felt this would help provide a “healing touch” to the Valley, now reeling under unprecedented violence for the past 34 days.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing a rally in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday, had also signalled that he was willing to go ahead with talks within the framework of “insaniyat (humanity), jamhooriyat (democracy) and Kashmiriyat”, a theme first invoked by former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee. Ms Mufti too had, in an emotional plea to the PM, urged him to invoke the Vajpayee legacy. Pressure is building on the Modi government from its alliance partner in J&K, the PDP, to start talks with the separatists. During the ongoing Kashmir violence, the Mehbooba government had reached out to the Hurriyat asking it to issue an appeal to the stone-pelting youth to desist and for restoring peace in the Valley.

The Congress has welcomed the all-party meeting, with Rajeev Shukla, MP, describing it as a good development. “The government has finally agreed to convene an all-party meeting on Jammu and Kashmir. I think it is a good development that the government has agreed to send a delegation of all political parties. And apart from that, the government has agreed to initiate the political process as well as a dialogue with all stakeholders in Kashmir,” Mr Shukla added.

There is a growing view in the government, sources said, that talks with all stakeholders was the only way forward, but the Centre wants to first prepare the groundwork on how the deliberations can be initiated. Home minister Rajnath Singh’s interaction with various groups during his visit to Kashmir in July is seen as the first step, though he did not meet any Hurriyat representative at that time. “If during the Vajpayee years then Deputy PM L.K. Advani could talk to the Hurriyat, the present dispensation also needs to engage with them, specially when PM Modi himself has invoked the Vajpayee legacy of insaniyat, jamhooriyat and Kashmiriyat. I think the government is realising this now, and may well be waiting for an opportune time and working out modalities on how to go about the dialogue process. The government also has to find a way of engaging with Pakistan as that aspect too can’t be ignored,” said a former senior official who was involved with Kashmir under the Vajpayee government.

Government sources claimed one of the possibilities that can’t be discounted at this stage is that the Centre may start back-channel talks with the separatists first, before bringing them formally to the table. A “covert dialogue” will help the Centre’s interlocutors gauge better what the separatists’ expectations from the Modi government are.

The back-channel talks will also ease pressure and offer a way out of the hard line adopted by the Centre, which had called off the foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan in 2014 over Pakistan high commissioner Abdul Basit’s move to meet the Hurriyat leaders. The following year the talks between the two national security advisers was cancelled due to Pakistan NSA Sartaj Aziz’s insistence on meeting the separatists during his New Delhi visit.

“We will wait to see how things pan out at the all-party meeting on Friday. If there is a consensus cutting across party lines of bringing even the Hurriyat on board, the Centre will start working in that direction. Though the modalities for formal talks will take time, the separatists can still be engaged through the back channel, or at the level of the state government first,” an MHA official said.