The Centre has invited the Valley’s key political parties to an all-party meeting on Kashmir that Prime Minister Narendra Modi plans to hold next week in Delhi, political sources said here on Saturday.
The invite marks the first outreach by the Centre to the Valley’s mainstream parties since the dilution of Article 370 on August 5, 2019, and appears to signify an admission of failure in providing a political alternative to Kashmir, or even in restoring a semblance of normalcy.
Speculation is rife here that the Centre wants to end the political impasse in Jammu and Kashmir by offering the restoration of statehood to a resentful local leadership, and to discuss a redrawing of constituencies and an Assembly election.
The People’s Democratic Party of Mehbooba Mufti, Congress, CPM, BJP, the Centre-backed Apni Party and Sajjad Lone’s party were among those that officially acknowledged receiving the invite. None has yet confirmed participation, although the BJP would be expected to attend anyway.
National Conference sources said their leadership too had received such a phone call but the party officially denied it. The Union government has not yet confirmed the development.
A source said Union home secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla had called and invited Mehbooba, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah, CPM secretary M.Y. Tarigami and others.
“We were only told to come to a meeting; we don’t know the agenda,” the source, a senior leader from one of these parties, said.
Altogether 14 Valley politicians have been invited, including 3 from the BJP, sources said.
The Jammu and Kashmir administration on Saturday released Mehbooba’s uncle and PDP leader Sartaj Madni. Party sources said it signified a thaw and showed that the Centre had been the first to blink.
“Relieved that PDPs Sartaj Madni has finally been released after 6 months of wrongful detention,” Mehbooba tweeted. “Its high time that GOI releases political prisoners & other detainees rotting in jails in & outside J&K. A raging pandemic should’ve been reason enough to free them.”
PDP chief spokesperson Suhail Bukhari said the party had not received any “formal written invitation” so far but confirmed that Mehbooba had been informed over the phone about the meeting.
He said the party’s political affairs committee would meet under Mehbooba’s leadership on Sunday and decide whether to participate at the Delhi meeting.
The overture comes exactly three years after the BJP withdrew support to Mehbooba’s government.
Mehbooba. File Picture
A National Conference source said that if “Mehboobaji has received the call, the National Conference would obviously have received it too”.
National Conference MP Anantnag Hasnain Masoodi denied that the party had received a call but asserted that it was not averse to holding talks. “By Monday, things might shape up,” Masoodi told The Telegraph.
He said there was talk about the Centre being willing to restore statehood but added that the National Conference remained firm in its demand for restoration of special status.
“If we go for any kind of short cuts or adopt ad hoc measures, (we are unlikely) to achieve the aim of peace with dignity. Restore whatever was available to us on August 4 (2019), then discuss the issues,” he said.
Masoodi said his party would address the concerns of the Centre and discuss the second-generation property rights of women from Jammu and Kashmir who have married outsiders, and the rights of the displaced people from Pakistan living in Jammu.
Under the now-scrapped special status, the children of Jammu and Kashmir women who had married outsiders had no rights over property in the erstwhile state. Nor could Pakistani refugees living in Jammu own property. The Centre has since amended the law, allowing all Indians to own property in Jammu and Kashmir.
For much of the last two years, the Valley has been in lockdown, first as part of a pre-emptive crackdown following the constitutional changes and then because of the pandemic. The economy has been struggling and the Centre’s iron fist alone has kept the political situation under control.
The National Conference and the PDP are part of a six-party alliance campaigning for restoration of the special status that has been weakened by differences and has existed only in name since last December.
It held its first meeting in six months recently amid speculation that the Centre planned to carve a Hindu-majority Jammu state out of the Union Territory.
The PDP leadership feels that the National Conference has gone slow on the demand for full restoration of Article 370, perhaps unable to stand up to the Centre’s iron rule.
The National Conference leadership too has been unhappy with Mehbooba’s statements last year that she would not hold the Tricolour in her hand until the Jammu and Kashmir flag was restored.
The proposed meeting in Delhi assumes significance as the Centre had in 2019 not just abrogated Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and statehood and divided it into two Union Territories, it had also arrested dozens of politicians including former chief ministers Mehbooba, Farooq and Omar Abdullah.
All these leaders were demonised by the Centre as corrupt, anti-peace and dynastic. Farooq was booked in connection with a financial scam at the Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association, which he had once headed, and all his three homes were attached by the Enforcement Directorate.
Mehbooba was booked in a money-laundering case and questioned by the ED.