Home Minister to head all-party team to Kashmir

NEW DELHI: Home minister P Chidambaram will lead a 35-member all-party delegation to Jammu and Kashmir. The team will meet political hard-liners, separatists and a cross section of people, in an attempt to find a solution to the cycle of violence that has hit the state.

Other members of the delegation include parliamentary affairs minister Pawan Kumar Bansal, Opposition leader Sushma Swaraj, BJP Rajya Sabha leader Arun Jaitley, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, T R Baalu (DMK), Ram Vilas Paswan (LJP), minister of state for railways and Indian Union Muslim League leader E Ahamed, CPM’s Basudeb Acharia and CPI’s Gurudas Dasgupta.

The delegation will leave in a special flight to Srinagar on Monday morning. It will spend Monday and a part of Tuesday in the Valley and will leave for Jammu on Tuesday afternoon. Public notices requesting all interested parties to meet the delegation have been issued. Individual invites have gone to 30-odd outfits, including both factions of Hurriyat and a few prominent associations.

The format of delegation’s meetings has not been finalised yet. The parties could spend some time in a structured format sitting in a designated place in Srinagar to meet delegations in turns.

Senior ministers indicated that the Centre does not hope to solve the crisis in just two days but the aim of the delegation is to send out a clear signal to the troubled state that the country cares. “The meetings are only to tell the people that we care, that representatives of entire India are going to them to lend them a sympathetic ear, hear their problems and woes and to sort their problems. This is why all political parties have been included. We don’t hope to solve the problem in two days. We hope to assuage them,” said a senior Congress minister.

The Centre does not hope to make much headway with Hurriyat leaders. While political parties are hoping to meet representatives as a whole group, it could break into sub-groups to talk to political hard-liners. “The exact format will be worked out only when we reach there. We have sent out invites but we don’t expect Hurriyat leaders, especially Geelani, to respond positively. We hope they do but we are ready to go as a smaller group to meet them at a place chosen by them,” said another minister.

How serious the Centre is about the visit of the delegation can be gauged by the fact that PDP has been kept in the loop throughout. Just like special efforts were made to ensure PDP’s presence in the all-party meeting in the Capital, the Centre has requested the party to be present at all meetings of the all-party delegation.

The government is quite hopeful that the positive spirit exhibited in the all-party meeting in New Delhi would continue and all parties would work towards a solution.