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Basharat Peer in New Delhi
The Centre's interlocutor on Jammu & Kashmir, Krishen Chandra Pant, said on Monday that there is a possibility of the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference, a conglomerate of various separatist groups, participating in the assembly elections in the state later this year.
Pant made this remark after meeting Wajahat Habibullah, former divisional commissioner of Kashmir, who is acting as the government's latest representative for talks with Kashmiri groups.
Habibullah, an Indian Administrative Service officer of the J&K cadre who heads the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, wields considerable influence among various political formations as well as the masses in the volatile valley.
He recently met Hurriyat chairman Abdul Gani Bhat and another separatist leader, Shabir Shah of the Jammu & Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party. Bhat confirmed the meeting, but what transpired remains unknown.
Habibullah, who met Pant on Monday afternoon, briefed him about his meeting with the Kashmiri politicians. Based on his inputs, Pant told reporters that the Hurriyat might participate in the polls.
Pant is interpreting the Hurriyat's proposal to set up its own election commission to conduct polls and determine the true representative of the people as a sign of its interest in the electoral process.
He refused to comment on the Hurriyat's demand to hold the polls under the supervision of international observers. But he pointed out that a group of people could not simply constitute an election commission on their own.
He called upon all political formations in Kashmir that believe in democracy to participate in the electoral process to prove their representative character.
He denied that the government had opened negotiations with the Hurriyat and added that there was no possibility of talks with the separatist conglomerate in the near future.
But Habibullah's meeting with Pant indicates that the Centre has indeed opened an informal channel of communication with the separatist groups in Kashmir. Pant's posturing shows that the government is keen to keep its latest initiative away from the media glare.
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