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| Kashmiri Pandits can't be taken for a ride | | PM for separate talks with migrant representatives | | From B L Kak
NEW DELHI, June 25: In a quiet move, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has commissioned a team of 'researchers' to prepare a list of 'acceptable' representatives of the uprooted community of Kashmiri Pandits. This unpublished exercise appears to be a prelude to the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh's intention to hold separate talks with 'chosen' representatives of the Kashmir Pandit migrants.
Need for the exercise is said to have been the outcome of a raft of letters Prime Minister received from a set of 'angry' Kashmiri Pandit (KP) leaders for having been sidelined, or ignored, when formal invitation was sent to only a select group of KP leaders for the recent round-table conference (RTC) on Kashmir in Srinagar.
Official intelligence agencies have informed both PMO and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) about mushrooming of Kashmiri Pandit groups and associations not only in Jammu region but also in several other parts of the country in recent years. This piece of information, obviously, meant to suggest that the task of preparing a list of 'chosen' representatives of the 'scattered' Kashmiri Pandit community is not easy at all.
Be that as it may, a specific move has been initiated to prepare the list of KP leaders the Prime Minister would like to talk to on a set of demands and grievances of the KP migrants. Observers attach importance to the contact the Home Minister, Shivraj Patil, has maintained with some senior KP leaders, including MK Kaw.
One of the comunications from a Kashmir Pandit organisation to the Prime Minister has highlighted a few issues the Centre "must immediately take care of". The Ministry of Home Affairs, EARLY TIMES was officially told, had taken some steps in "close coperation" with the J&K administration to deal with Islamic rebels. These steps followed three developments.
First, of course, is the renewed terrorist violence in Kashmir. Second development emanated from the visible differences of opinion among Muslim separatist groups in Kashmir on the "return formula" in relation to the Kashmiri Pandit migrants. Third development is the product of the reported warning from the JKLF leadership to the Kashmiri Pandit community's "hard-line" leaders to avoid being "impulsive while discussing Kashmiri Muslims".
In a situation like this, the Government of India wants the Jammu and Kashmir administration to be cautious while creating public opinion in support of return of uprooted Kashmiri Pandits (KPs) to the Valley. New Delhi is already committed to assisting the J&K administration in facilitating the KPs' return to the Valley. But New Delhi has once again made it plain that inconsistent signals will not help KPs.
The Centre's emphasis on caution by the J&K government is to be studied in the context of the rising trend in terrorist activites. Both Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) feel that the renewed terrorist activity, if looked against the backdrop of the "fact" that necesary infrastructure still exists across the border to aid and abet terrorist activities in Jammu and Kashmir, makes it amply clear that menace of cross-border terrorism and infiltration will continue to pose a serious challenge to India in the times to come.
It is offical: Alternate routes for anti-national elements for entering India were being developed. Again, it is official: The ongoing militancy and terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir have all along been influenced by the activities going on across the border and the Line of Control (LoC) in the State. This influence is largely manifested in the form of unabated and steady flow of trained, well-armed and well-equipped militants infiltrating into J&K from across the border as also the exfiltration of misguided persons, especially the youth, from the State for receivng training across the border.
Amid the talk of the government's plan for bringing about KPs' return to the troubled Valley, attempts continue to be made by a section of Islamist fundamentalists to communalise the situation in diferent parts of J&K. The government of India does not deny the available inputs vis-a-vis the existence in Kashmir of those indivduals and groups that are not for re-settlement of the KPs in the Valley. Secondly, these indivduals and groups have not given up the demand for making Kashmir an exclusive territory for Muslims alone.
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