All party meeting to discuss K-intelocutors' report

Report may be submitted to govt by the end of September

PTI | July 26, 2011



The centre will convene an all party meeting once the interlocutors on Kashmir submit their recommendations for discussing them, home minister P Chidambaram has said.

"The interlocutors were appointed after the all party meeting. So I suppose once the interlocutors give the report, I think so, I will have to ask my colleagues and the (Manmohan Singh), we will perhaps take the report to the all party meeting," Chidambaram told PTI.

Chidambaram said that the interlocutors had done bulk of their work and were now in the process of submitting their recommendations.

While no date on the submission of the report by the three-member panel comprising noted journalist Dilip Padgaonkar, academician Radha Kumar and former chief information commissioner M M Ansari had been fixed, sources said that the final report may be handed over to the government by end of the September this year.

The appointment of the three-member panel on Kashmir was part of the eight-point Kashmir formula announced by the centre after an all party meeting in September last year that was called after the Valley saw widespread unrest fuelled by separatists.

The interlocutors have so far made 10 visits to the state and covered 18 of the 22 districts during which they have met nearly 5,000 people which includes political leaders, trade unions, lawyers, student unions and newly elected panchs and sarpanchs.

The panel will now be visiting four remaining districts -- Shopian, Kupwara and Baramulla in Kashmir and Sambha in Jammu after which they were expected to hold meetings with major political parties in the state to discuss broad contours of the report.

The panel had submitted its interim report nearly six weeks back.

The terms and references of the interlocutors panel were to hold talks all shades of opinion including mainstream political parties and separatists. The panel will cover views of all the three regions--Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir.

Radha Kumar, who heads the Nelson Mandela Institute of Peace in Jamia Milia Islamia, had earlier also been engaged in back-channel discussions with moderate Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

However, the separatists including both factions of Hurriyat Conference led by Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Syed Ali Shah Geelani have not met the interlocutors.

Former Hurriyat chairman and a prominent Shia leader Maulana Abbas Ansari had met one of the interlocutors but in his individual capacity.

The centre had also announced constitution of two special task forces for Jammu and Ladakh regions which were mandated to examine the allocations in terms of infrastructure needs and make suitable recommendations to overcome the deficiencies in these two areas.

While Abhijit Sen, a planning commission member, was leading a task force on Jammu, Narendra Jadhav, another planning commission member, was the chairperson of the team on Ladakh.

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