Srinagar :Senior Congress leader and former Union Minister Saifuddin Soz on Wednesday said the visit by the envoys takes place almost every year and is a futile exercise as the government has no benefit from it.
“The envoys come here and enjoy the courtesies of the government and go back. Only some of them read the truth behind this exercise. Government of India has advantage of this exercise, it is a futile exercise. It would be better that the government opens a dialogue with the mainstream parties of Kashmir,” Soz said.
Hurriyat Conference led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said the visit of the envoys was a curated tour for misleading the world.
“A curated tour of foreign dignitaries to showcase ‘normalcy’ in the valley to the outside world is misleading. People’s spontaneous strike, the only means of protest left to them, speaks volumes to the world of what people feel and want,” the amalgam said in a statement.
Last year, envoys from 17 nations, including the United States, had visited Jammu and Kashmir and the team also comprised ambassadors from Vietnam, South Korea, Brazil, Uzbekistan, Niger, Nigeria, Morocco, Guyana, Argentina, Philippines, Norway, Maldives, Fiji, Togo, Bangladesh and Peru.
Immediately three months after the Centre withdrew special status of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcated it into two union territories, a delegation of 23 EU MPs was taken on a two-day visit to assess the situation in Jammu & Kashmir by the International Institute for Non-Aligned Studies, a Delhi-based think tank.
