Srinagar: While the Government of India’s representative, Dineshwar Sharma, holding dialogue with different groups of people, mainstream opposition parties say enthusiasm in the Valley on Dharma’s arrival is missing.
President JK Pradesh Congress Committee (JKPCC) GA Mir said the party have been invited by Sharma and will meet him in the afternoon at 3.pm on Wednesday.
Senior Congress leader and VC president N Monga said that BJP and PDP are responsible for creating confusion about Sharma and his dialogue process even before he could kick start the entire process.
“BJP-led government at the centre and the PDP-BJP alliance in the state created confusion after appointment of Dineshwar Sharma to hold dialogue process in Kashmir. Some BJP leaders called him spokesman, some representative, and no BJP minister or leader said that he is an interlocutor,” Monga said.
Monga said that both the state and centre government were off the track about the representative and thus “enthusiasm is lacklustre”. “His mandate has not been cleared it by the central government,” he said.
National Conference, general secretary Ali Muhammad Sagar said that the appointment of the representative was not dealt with seriousness and sensitivity.
Sagar said that the party is yet to get a formal invitation for the meeting. “We have not received any invitation yet. And about meeting with Sharma, Dr Farooq Abdullah will decide tomorrow,” he said.
The NC leader said that in valley the spirit about dialogue is missing as BJP created mess after Sharma’s appointment.
“BJP gave volley of contradicting statements about him. When there is mess around it, people lose confidence on it,” he said.
He said that the dialogue failed “75 %” after Hurriyat rejected it. “Hurriyat is a stakeholder whether someone accepts it or not. When the main voices of dissent are not in the dialogue process, it is its 75 % failure,” he said.
He said that Sharma has himself said that the state government fixes meetings of the people with him.
“So it becomes quite confusing which parties and groups are selected by the government for the meetings with him,” he said.
Senior mainstream political leaders MY Tarigami, Hakim Yaseen and Ghulam Hassan Mir will be meeting Sharma tomorrow at the residence of Tarigami at Gupkar.
Meanwhile, former spymaster and RAW chief A S Dulat has said that dialogue without Hurriyat will be meaningless.
“The much-maligned Hurriyat is far more accessible. Sharma’s old friends should help him reach out to them even if being out is never quite the same as being in the system. Not talking to the separatists would render the dialogue meaningless. The mainstream does not need an interlocutor to engage. As former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah once said, they were always available to Delhi for talks, it is the separatists that Delhi needs to engage with,” Dulat has written in an article in English daily, The Hindu.
