New Delhi: Raising apprehensions on Narendra Modi government’s decision to appoint former Intelligence Bureau chief Dineshwar Sharma for dialogue with all stakeholders in Kashmir, former interlocutor Radha Kumar said the Centre’s stand of only looking at what it considers to be ‘legitimate aspirations’ will ‘kill the dialogue even before starting it’.
“If the government says it is going to decide what is legitimate and what is not, what aspirations are and aren’t, it is killing the dialogue even before starting it,” Kumar told News18, adding that Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s choice of words had put dialogue process on precarious grounds.
Singh on Monday announced the 1979 batch IPS officer Dineshwar Sharma will be Government of India’s representative to Jammu and Kashmir. Recalling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day speech in which he had said that ‘Kashmir’s solution was neither in abuse nor in bullets, but in embracing Kashmiris’, Singh said Sharma will lead a “sustained dialogue” in J&K.
Radha Kumar was one of the three interlocutors for J&K appointed by erstwhile Manmohan Singh government. The panel was headed by journalist Dilip Padgaonkar and the other member was former Election Commissioner M M Ansari.
Kumar said the fact that the government has given Sharma the mandate to decide who to engage in dialogue meant that the latter had authority. “Now, that’s a very good sign,” she added. Inclusion of Hurriyat, she further said, was important for the government to sustain the dialogue.
Highlighting that Hurriyat leaders have played a part in the process earlier, not once but several times, Kumar said they are ‘absolutely essential’ for talks. “There are many issues at hand. Alienation and anger are the two biggest problems in the Valley. Whatever is required to make sure that these feelings go away must be done immediately. And militancy. All these need to be discussed in detail and Hurriyat must be involved,” she told News18.
On Rajnath Singh’s announcement that there will be special focus on youth, she said, “I don’t understand what they mean by youth. It’s not like one has an organized force or an organization… We’ll have to wait and see what they actually mean by that.”
In 2010, the three interlocutors were appointed following the violence in which over a 100 Kashmiris had died. Among their recommendations was a proposal to review the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), urgently address human rights violations, reducing army’s visibility, and lift the Disturbed Areas Act. None of these recommendations were implemented by the UPA II government. “I still stand by all the recommendations we made during our time,” Kumar said.
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