NEW DELHI: (AMN) The three-member team of interlocutors on Kashmir appointed by the centre would start sustained dialogue with the people of Jammu and Kasmir from today (Tuesday).
The team led by senior journalist Dileep Padgaonkar met the Home Minister P Chidambaram and briefed on the mandate that the group has been given. Central Information Commissioner M M Ansari and academic Prof Radha Kumar are the two other members of the team.
Padgaonkar said that his team is going to address the entire range of issues with the people of Jammu and Kashmir and it would meet different shades of people and political affiliation without any hesitation. “If a political issue is brought to the table, the group will not shy away from discussing it”, he said.
Kashmiri separatist criticized the panel saying in the absence of a politician in the team indicated the non-serious approach of the government. Padgaonkar, however made it clear that criticism has in no way disheartened the group. He also added that their terms of reference did not restrict what they discuss. The panel will submit its report to the Centre within a year.
The interlocutors will be in Jammu and Kashmir for one week every month month. As part of the eight-point peace package for Kashmir, the Centre on October 13 finalised the names of the three interlocutors to hold a renewed dialogue with separatist leaders in the trouble-torn Valley.
Padgaonkar was member of the Kashmir Committee led by eminent lawyer and MP Ram Jethmalani. Radha Kumar, who heads the Nelson Mandela Institute of Peace in Jamia Millia Islamia, was engaged in back-channel discussions with ‘moderate’ Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani. She was in the valley recently and had visited Mr Geelani at a hospital in Srinagar where he was undergoing treatment. Ansari was a professor and director at the Hamdard University before becoming the Information Commissioner.