Srinagar: Former Intelligence Bureau chief Dineshwar Sharma, who was appointed as the ‘representative’ by Government of India to understand the “legitimate aspirations” of people in Jammu and Kashmir, is arriving in Kashmir on Monday.
Sharma has already sent invitation to mainstream parties like Congress, National Conference, Democratic Party Nationalist (DPN) and others, asking them meet him.
Shrama is also meeting Governor N N Vohra, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti besides leaders of tiling BJP and PDP.
Mehbooba has already pinned hopes on Sharma whom she different to the previous interlocutors sent by the UPA and other regimes at New Delhi, saying they didn’t have an official position as he enjoys the rank and status of a cabinet secretary.
Sources in National Conference, the grand old party of Kashmir, said that former chief minister and its working president Omar Abdullah would lead a party delegation to meet Sharma. Farooq Abdullah won’t meet him on invitation but if he calls upon him, the sources said.
Similarly, Congress has also decided to meet the representative who has the mandate for a “sustained dialogue with all stakeholders” to find a political solution to the Kashmir issue.
Chairman of the Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) Engineer Rashid, who was last month questioned by NIA, will also meet him.
The Joint Resistance Leadership has already announced not to meet him. They said if present dispensation in New Delhi was not even ready for autonomy, how can it address or engage with the Kashmiris “political will and aspiration of self-determination.”
The leadership comprising Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik ays that while in principle pro-freedom leadership has always advocated and supported “sincere and productive dialogue” as a means of conflict resolution over Jammu and Kashmir, “what it inherently entails from all participants to dialogue is the basic acknowledgment that there is a dispute that has to be resolved. But Govt of India continuously refuses to accept this basic premise and the reality on the ground.
Referring to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s outright dismissal of former Home minister Chidambaram’s suggestion of restoration of autonomy for J&K, they said that if government of India even rejects the demand of its co-political party for restoration of autonomy guaranteed by its own constitution, calling it a betrayal with soldiers and hence unacceptable, “how will such a dispensation in New Delhi address or engage with the Kashmiri people’s political will and aspiration of self-determination for which people have been relentlessly struggling and sacrificing for the past 70 years.”
They said that this clearly indicates that the hyped upon appointment of former Intelligence Bureau chief by GoI as its interlocutor for J&K was nothing more than a tactic to buy time adopted under international pressures and regional compulsions and “due to the abysmal failure of the state policy of military repression upon the people of Kashmir.”
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