Jammu, Jan 17: On the first day of their fourth visit to Jammu and Kashmir, the three-member interlocutors’ panel on Monday held wide-range of discussions with the BJP, the Panthers Party and the academicians to seek their viewpoint for evolving a broad consensus for a political settlement in this trouble-torn state.
Their meeting with the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah could not take place because the latter was out of town.
The panel comprising Dileep Padgaonkar, Prof Radha Kumar and MM Ansari would visit Udhampur, Srinagar and Budgam district during their five-day-long visit before leaving back for New Delhi on January 21.
The interlocutors, who reached Jammu at around 11:30 a.m, went to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters at Kachi Chawni and interacted with the senior BJP leaders on various issues including BJYM’s proposed plan of flag hoisting. The meeting lasted for one hour and fifteen minutes.
The BJP had refused to meet them during their last visit in December as the party received the invitation late than the fixed schedule of the meeting.
Padgaonkar, though refused to take media queries, said: “We had a meeting with the state BJP leaders and we are quite satisfied with the discussions. We have agreed to meet them again and we are hopeful that we will meet them next month when we come here.”
The interlocutors’ panel had met over 100 delegations in Jammu, Rajouri and Poonch districts during their four days long visit in December, 2010.
On October 13, the Centre had appointed three interlocutors as part of its eight-point Kashmir peace initiative. The interlocutors had already said the people in Jammu and Kashmir were “yearning for a negotiated and peaceful political settlement” and anything that responds to the political, administrative and economical aspirations of the people would alone be a “durable solution” to the J&K problem.
Official sources said the interlocutors also visited the Jammu University campus and held interaction with the university faculty, seeking their viewpoint over any roadmap to the vexed Kashmir imbroglio.
“The interlocutors held discussion with university faculty headed by Vice-Chancellor, Prof Varun Sahni. The meeting was also attended by senior professors who shared their viewpoint with the panel,” official sources said.
Later, a delegation of JKNPP led by working chairman of the party, Harsh Dev Singh, called on the interlocutors and submitted a 17-point charter for consideration and recommendation to the Government of India.
Harsh Dev proposed reorganisation of the state on the basis of language, geography and culture so as to give opportunities of “harmonious development” to the people of all the three regions.
He also submitted separate recruitment boards, separate competent authorities, separate PSCs, separate delimitation and separate planning boards.
The JKNPP also demanded revocation of the Indus Water Treaty which they described as highly prejudicial and detrimental to the interests of the India.
Official sources said the panel would call on the Governor N N Vohra tomorrow evening at Raj Bhawan.
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