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Congress flays Vajpayee's 'messy' Kashmir policy

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

The rivalry between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress flared up again on Monday with the latter's Kashmir cell unleashing a broadside at the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, calling its approach towards the sensitive border state "messy, confusing and directionless".

"Our Kashmir group is meeting to take stock of the situation in the state because of the central government's lop-sided approach," said senior Congress politician Pranab Mukherjee, who chairs the group.

Mukherjee said the group would endeavour to highlight the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government's mistakes, which are "responsible for the continuing violence in Jammu & Kashmir from which there appears to be no respite for the hapless Kashmiris".

The rifle-grenade attack on Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah on Sunday has evoked a wave of sympathy for him from political leaders and Congress president Sonia Gandhi did not lag behind in this regard.

According to Congress spokesman Anand Sharma, Gandhi called on Abdullah and inquired after his safety.

The Congress leadership decided soon after to convene the Kashmir group to "expose" the government's shortcomings. But, Sharma said, much of the group's discussions centred on fashioning the party's strategy. If the leadership felt the need, the deliberations would be shared with the media.

Underscoring that the government had no well-conceived policy on Kashmir, Sharma said External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh had talked of visiting Pakistan to sort out the tangle.

"It is ironic that the government recently called off the tour of the Indian cricket team to Pakistan, overlooking the wisdom of promoting people-to-people contact through cultural and sports exchanges," Sharma maintained.

This did not reflect a mature response on the government's part, he said, adding that the Congress had consistently stressed the need for an Indo-Pak dialogue which did not mean "sitting at the negotiating table under threat, but a sovereign state cannot be scared of dialogue".

The Congress leaders emphasized that India's past approach had been firmly anchored in the 1972 Simla Accord and "bilaterism was its essence".

The second tenet of the agreement was that Kashmir would not be the sole agenda for talks between the two neighbours, "but the present government has violated both these tenets", he said.

Congressman Salman Khurshid said the Track II diplomacy undertaken by the government had not yet shown the desired results. On the contrary, the government seemed to be "groping in the dark" as violence in the state showed no signs of abating.

Besides, he pointed out, his party had expressed grave concern that even the prime minister's office was among the terrorists' targets.

In keeping with the general trend, however, the BJP poohpoohed the Congress criticism. Party vice-president K Jana Krishnamurthy said it was because of the policies of the Congress since Independence that the state had slid into the present quagmire.

"If militants have become bold enough to spread out in J&K and, indeed, in other parts of the country, it is thanks to the Congress. The party did very little to stem the rot in the state and its negligence and maladministration for well over three decades have brought things to such a deplorable pass," he argued.

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