Interlocutors: Willing to meet Hurriyat
Having completed its four-day visit to the troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, Dileep Padgaonkar who heads the interlocutors team constituted by the Centre has said that the team will be willing to meet the separatist Hurriyat leaders whenever they want to meet it.
Having returned to Delhi on Thursday evening from its visit to Srinagar and Jammu, the three-member team met neither Huriyat hawk Syed Ali Shah Geelani nor the leader of its moderate faction, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.
Both refused to meet the team while it was in Srinagar. However, Mr Padgaonkar said that the team would be willing to meet the Hurriyat leaders whenever they were willing to talk to them.
While the team met a wide cross-section of people in the state during its visit, the BJP was one political party whose representatives did not meet the interlocutors. In New Delhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party slammed the panel for transforming a “quiet dialogue” as claimed by Union home minister P. Chidambaram into “sound byte unilateralism”.
The party said that Mr Chidambaram had earlier claimed that a process of quiet dialogue was on for about a year to find a solution to the Jammu and Kashmir problem.
In Jammu, one of the team members, Radha Kumar when asked by reporters about her reported remarks suggesting an amendment to the Indian constitution, Ms Kumar denied having made the suggestion. According to agencies, she said on Thursday, “What I did say is that the Indian Constitution is a very beautiful Constitution and I am very fond of it and it has demonstrated flexibility time and again.”
Ms Kumar added, “If there is some agreement by all parties on some new solution, I am sure that the Indian Parliament would be happy to consider it.”
On the issue of “azadi” , a demand that it raised time and again by various sections of people in the state, Ms Kumar said: “It is a very, very flexible and nuanced term which has many meanings for different people. One of our tasks will, no doubt, be to explore these nuances in the coming months.” Now that the team is back in the capital, it is likely to submit its report to Union home minister P. Chidambaram sometime next week.
As for a solution to the Kashmir issue, Mr Padgaonkar said in Jammu that it would need to be one that is acceptable to all regions of the state and to all sections of its people.
Post new comment