Kashmir talks are for peace, militancy will be tackled militarily: Ram Madhav

New Delhi: The appointment of an interlocutor is not a U-turn in the government’s Kashmir approach as militants and their supporters would be tackled militarily while those who want to have a dialogue can come and talk, BJP leader and its Kashmir in-charge Ram Madhav said on Saturday.
Madhav rebutted opposition criticism to the move, saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Kashmir policy was “consistent” in a sense that tackling the issue needed a multi-pronged approach that called for different activities to be taken up simultaneously.
“And one of them is to tackle militants through strong military action. Whoever indulges in anti-national activities in the valley – whether in the form of indulging in terrorism or in the form of promoting it, sponsoring it, supporting it – will be caught. That will continue. But if somebody wants to come and talk to the central government, they can talk to the representative,” he told CNN-New18 TV news channel.
Asked if it was not a complete shift from the government’s approach of refusing to talk to the Hurriyat and an acknowledgement that the solution to the Kashmir problem lay in dialogue, Madhav said talks would be held with “sections that are ready to engage… but you will deal with sections in an appropriate manner that are out to indulge in terror”.
The government on Monday appointed former Intelligence Bureau chief Dineshwar Sharma as an interlocutor to open talks with all stakeholders in Kashmir.