Jammu and Kashmir separatists as well as mainstream political parties have raised questions over the manner in which New Delhi called off the Foreign Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan.
Just moments after Shabir Shah met Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit in New Delhi on Monday, India announced the cancellation of the talks slated for August 25.
The separatists and political parties are now alleging that allowing the meeting to go ahead was a ploy to call off the talks.
“If New Delhi wanted to have talks with Pakistan, they could have stopped the separatists in Srinagar itself. But it allowed them to go to Delhi and then used it as an alibi for cancelling the talks,” Nayeem Akhter, the chief spokesperson of the People’s Democratic Party, told The Hindu . “It seems the Government of India was looking forward to cancelling the talks.”
Mr. Shah, the first separatist leader to meet the Pakistan envoy, echoed the same sentiment. “Our presence in Delhi was used by the Indian Government to flare up nationalist passions through news channels and then they called off the talks, which they could have gone ahead with by imprisoning us in our houses here,” he said.
“The BJP is again appealing to the Hindu vote bank for the upcoming Assembly elections by first allowing us to reach Delhi and then calling off the talks,” he added.
The separatist leader said news of the cancellation of the Indo-Pak talks took him by surprise. “The moment I came out from the meeting, I was told that the talks had been called off,” he said. “It came as a surprise.”
While the separatists are allowed regulated contact with Pakistani officials in New Delhi, the Government has in the past physically stopped them from going to the national capital for meetings with visiting Pakistani leaders.
This was the case when former Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar toured India in 2011 and when Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Advisor on National Security and Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz Khan, came in 2013. Mr Shah was kept under house arrest in Srinagar and not allowed to meet them in Delhi.
