All-party team meets J&K CM, Opposition in Kashmir

An all-party delegation which is on a two-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday held talks with a cross-section of people, including chief minister Mehbooba Mufti and Opposition National Conference leader Omar Abdullah with a view to restore peace in the Valley.

Union home minister Rajnath Singh, who is heading the delegation before leaving for Srinagar, said its members are meeting and holding talks with individuals and groups “who want peace and normalcy in the Kashmir Valley.”

However, the separatists, Kashmir Inc, doctors and lawyers associations and an alliance of various groups representing minority Sikhs refused to meet the delegation on the plea that it has no mandate to address the core issue of Kashmir and that such visits in the past failed to even prepare ground for any meaningful political engagement on Kashmir.

The 26-member delegation began holding meetings at Sher-i-Kashmir international conference centre on the banks of Dal Lake soon after arriving here. Initially, the delegation was proposed to comprise 29 Members of Parliament, but only 26 MPs have come to Srinagar.

The first meeting the delegation had was with chief minister Mufti. While welcoming the APD, she called for creating an institutionalised mechanism for dialogue and resolution of the Kashmir issue and a new basis of legitimacy for peace and resolution process to take shape. “The need of the hour is to revive the reconciliation and resolution process through an institutionalised mechanism involving all the stakeholders,” she said and added that the challenge before the leadership of the state and the country is to insulate the process from the setbacks that have derailed the process in the past.

The chief minister said, “All of us are deeply concerned about the painful situation existing in Kashmir and a credible and meaningful political dialogue and resolution process has to be initiated to end the stalemate.”

She said that it is a welcome step that cuts across party lines and political positions, the country’s political leadership has reached out to the people of Jammu and Kashmir and that all the mainstream political parties and separatist leadership in the state voice the urges and aspirations of the people and seek a lasting resolution to the problems confronting Jammu and Kashmir.

The NC delegation said that the country’s leadership should learn from past mistakes and work towards a lasting solution to the Kashmir issue for which a “credible and meaningful political process” must be initiated without wasting further time. A document submitted to the APD by the NC said that the current political unrest in Kashmir that has spread to parts of Jammu, as well as Ladakh region, needs to be seen in a deeper and objective perspective. “This unrest, with its own set of provocations and characteristics, is another expression of collective indignation by the people of Kashmir at New Delhi’s continued refusal to acknowledge that the issue in Kashmir is of a political nature and requires a sustained, broad-based and credible political approach based on the tenets of empathy and statesmanship,” it said.

It added that the Centre’s “conventional investment in a policy of containment and operational management of the political sentiment in Kashmir has created a prolonged phase of political vacuum” and that the “very fact that initiatives of political outreach, such as the visit of this APD are seen as reactionary manoeuvres rather than proactive initiatives, points at the reason for the sense of scepticism in the Valley”. It asserted that historically, the genesis of the political issue in Kashmir lies in the erosion of the State’s internal autonomy and a number of broken promises that violated good-faith agreements between the leadership of the State and successive Central governments. “The dismissal of a popular, elected government in 1953 and the incarceration of J&K’s Prime Minister, Late Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was the first blow that demolished the bond of good faith between Kashmir and New Delhi”, it said.

Congress delegation-led by the JKPCC President Ghulam Ahmad Mir and that of the BJP headed by Deputy Chief Minister Dr Nirmal Singh also met the APD. Awami Itihad Party delegation led by its leader and independent MLA Engineer Sheikh Abdur Rashid Rasheed also met the APD and said that the only resolution to Kashmir dispute is holding plebiscite by implementing UN resolutions.

In the evening, the APD met Governor N.N. Vohra who briefed it about the “obtaining situation in the State and some of the measures which need to be taken for the restoration of peace and normalcy”, an official spokesman said.

The delegation will continue to meet people here on Monday morning before going to winter capital Jammu to continue the interactions with cross-sections of the people.