The all-party delegation’s two-day Kashmir visit on Sunday saw the separatists taking centre-stage as Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Shabir Ahmad Shah and Yasin Malik turned down the offer by some non-BJP MPs to engage with them.
This overshadowed the day-long meeting that a 30-member MPs’ delegation, headed by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, had with representatives of mainstream parties at Srinagar’s Sher-i-Kashmir International Convention Centre (SKICC), the first political attempt by the Centre to engage with the crisis in the Valley.
Members of the parties – including the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the opposition National Conference (NC), as well as the local leadership of the BJP and the Congress — whom the all-party delegation met, all pitched for a “sustained and meaningful dialogue process with all stakeholders.”
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Non-BJP MPs — the CPI-M’s Sitaram Yechury, the CPI’s D. Raja, the Janata Dal United’s Sharad Yadav, Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Jaiprakash Yadav and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s Asaduddin Owaisi — decided to reach out, in their individual capacities, to Mr. Geelani at his residence at Hyderpora, and Mr. Malik, Mr. Shah and the Mirwaiz, all lodged in different sub-jails.
The MPs faced jeering crowds and anti-India slogans outside Mr. Geelani's residence.
While Mr. Geelani refused to open his gates to the MPs, Mr. Malik and the Mirwaiz expressed their unwillingness to talk, saying “New Delhi was not serious” and “talks cannot be held within the ambit of the Constitution.”
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Later, Mr. Owaisi — after meeting the Mirwaiz at the Chesmashahi Sub-Jail — said, “There is need for a formal political dialogue initiative from the Government of India. It should be done in a serious way.”
Late in the evening, Mr. Yechury, Mr. Raja and Mr. Sharad Yadav again visited the Mirwaiz and met him for 25 minutes. Sources said the Mirwaiz told them the reasons for not engaging with the delegation include “non-seriousness to resolve the core issue, unabated cycle of killings and lack of institutional mechanism for result-oriented dialogue process.”
I expect little from all-party team visit: Omar
After the meeting with the all-party delegation in Srinagar on Sunday, National Conference working president Omar Abdullah said: “The mechanism of the all-party delegation’s visit did not enthuse me. It will be of no consequence and I expect the least breakthrough. Our own action of not following up the 2010 initiative adequately has given rise to a credibility crisis.”
He was referring to the report prepared by government-appointed interlocutors that followed a similar all-party delegation visit in 2010.
This came a day after Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti — belatedly — wrote letters to the separatist leaders in her capacity as PDP chief, seeking their cooperation by engaging with the delegation. But this overture saw the separatists describing Ms. Mufti’s offer as an “attempt at obfuscation.”
The BJP, on its part, distanced itself from Ms. Mufti’s move to extend a formal invitation – an invitation which she, significantly offered in her capacity as PDP chief, not as head of a coalition government that included the BJP.
With both non-BJP MPs and Valley-based mainstream political parties pressing for the inclusion of the Hurriyat in the talks, the BJP may now be forced to open a dialogue, as it did in 2003 during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Prime Ministership, with moderate separatists.
‘Double talk’
Earlier in the day, the separatist leaders issued a joint statement: “One fails to understand what hope to attach with a delegation which has neither spelled out its mandate for any engagement on a clear agenda… India has deployed deceit and double talk.”