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| Govt interlocutor completes 6 months in office | | Difficult state, heterogeneous people | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, May 2: Government of India's Special Representative for J&K, Dineshwar Sharma, has completed six months in office. It's time to examine what this former Intelligence Bureau Director achieved during all these six months.
Appointed by the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to hold talks with "all stakeholders in J&K" on October 24, 2017, Sharma started the work the same day, though he publicly admitted that he was not very sure about his mandate.
He made this statement after MoS in PMO Jitendra Singh said in Jammu that Dineshwar Sharma was not an interlocutor, but "spokesperson" of the Narendra Modi Government, thus indicating that the PMO and HM were not on the same page as far as the mandate of Sharma was concerned.
During the last six months, Sharma visited both Jammu and Srinagar more than 6 times, where he interacted with many delegations.
As part of his reach out programme, he visited different districts headquarters and interacted with different representatives, trader bodies, local villagers and youth and formulated a certain set of recommendations for the state government to pay heed to.
He also tried to bring on board separatists like Syed Ali Shah Geelani, but with no result as they insisted that they would talk to New Delhi only after it recognized J&K as a disputed territory. He also visited Leh to feel the pulse of people.
Besides, Dineshwar Sharma held talks with umpteen "mainstream" politicians belonging to PDP, NC, BJP, Congress and so on. Now as the state government has shifted its base from Jammu to Srinagar as part of biannual Darbar move all the focus is likely to be shifted to the Kashmir-specific initiatives to ensure, what political observers call, "peace returns and tourism activity peaks".
Sources said that Sharma would again try to bring on table the Hurriyat Conference of Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Hurriyat Conference of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq so that he could carry forward the dialogue process to resolve the issues in J&K, including so-called Kashmir issue. However, reports from Srinagar suggest that separatists like Geelani are unlikely to oblige Sharma.
Reports also suggest that "Dineshwar Sharma would have to work hard in tandem with Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti to explore the possibility of reaching out to the separatist camp to initiate the dialogue process". It is reported that Sharma's task would be incomplete in case separatists continued to maintain distance from him and that his whole exercise would mean nothing.
Soon after the appointment of Dineshwar Sharma, a sense of euphoria was created across the state. His appointment was seen as another attempt by the Government of India to engage with people belonging to different shades of opinion. After initial rounds of talks Sharma himself had proposed talks "with all stakeholders" but instead of responding to his feelers separatist camps rejected the idea outright. It will be interesting to see if he is able to convince all separatists like Geelani, which appears to be a remote possibility.
The problem of Sharma is that he is dealing with a state where the people are not homogeneous and where there three distinct regions having nothing to do with each other. In Kashmir, people's demand range from Azadi to merger with Pakistan to self-rule to autonomy to demilitarization. In Jammu, the demands range from statehood to regional autonomy to regional council to abolition of Article 370. In Ladakh, the people of Leh district stand for UT status. People of Kargil stand for status quo. And then there are internally displaced Kashmiri Hindus, who have made it loud and clear again and again that they would accept anything short of separate homeland in the Valley invested with UT status.
Dineshwar Sharma can't ignore these irreconcilable contradictions and divisions. Similarly, he can't impose will of people of Kashmir on the unwilling people of Jammu and Ladakh. |
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