If somebody were to tell you that the solution to the Kashmir imbroglio will have to be found outside the ambit of the constitution, you will dismiss the suggestion without so much as a second thought. If the same is said by somebody authorised by the central government, though, it is a matter of serious concern. The three-member team of interlocutors sent by the centre to the valley has repeatedly struck discordant notes – it started off by saying that Pakistan will have to be engaged to arrive at any solution on Kashmir. Either the team has seriously mistaken its brief or somebody down there in the ivory tower of New Delhi has got a startlingly original conception of the role of interlocutors.

Interlocutor is commonly understood to be someone who is involved in a conversation and who is representing someone else. When the centre announced the team comprising Dileep Padgaonkar, M M Ansari and Radha Kumar, it was expected that these three would engage with various political and social sections in the valley on behalf of the centre. Of course, there was widespread apprehension that this team would not carry much weight. The move signalled desperation on part of the centre, which, in the absence of political will to crack the whip on its coalition partner in the Omar Abdullah-led government in the state, was clearly clutching at straws in the wind. The team of interlocutors then has surprised not as much in its inefficacy, which was expected, but in its political impropriety.

Are these interlocutors speaking for the central government? If so, why isn’t the prime minister spelling out such significant policy shifts instead? If the answer is no, who are the interlocutors speaking for? In either case, then, the interlocutors have no business to issue such statements. There is of course a third possibility. If the idea was really to deflect attention from Omar Abdullah in the first place, the interlocutors seem to be doing handsomely. Else, it is time they stopped making policy announcements and got on with their limited job at hand.