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| Is Wajahat trying to push quiet diplomacy by meeting Geelani? | | | ABID SHAH
NEW DELHI, JAN 14: Signs of Centre’s quiet diplomacy vis-à-vis Kashmir being underway became pronounced today amid a news agency report saying that senior bureaucrat and Centre’s Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) Wajahat Habibullah called on senior Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani here on Wednesday evening.
Not only this but today’s developments indicate that the CIC has initiated a move to seek legal opinion regarding entertaining requests for information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act by those who move before the Commission with this with regard to human rights violations in the wake of actions by personnel of paramilitary forces.
And if this move is to be viewed together with Habibullah’s visit to Geelani to enquire about his health and welfare after the Hurriyat leader underwent an eye surgery here, none can miss the fact that the CIC is doing exactly what Geelani has been demanding for long. The Hurriyat leader has been alleging large scale violation of human rights in the Kashmir Valley among other things.
And as the laws for the State of Jammu and Kashmir differ from the rest of the country and RTI is yet to come into play in the State, the CIC’s move here regarding human rights violation may not mean much for Jammu and Kashmir and can at best create only a precedent but nonetheless Habibullah’s move turns him a bit talk savvy with Kashmir’s separatist leadership for which the Centre has been keen ever since Kashmir visits by Union Home Minister and Prime Minister during the last quarter of the year just gone by.
Moreover, Wajahat Habibullah is slated to take over as CIC in J&K as soon as the Union Government and the leader of Opposition arrive at a consensus on his successor or replacement at the Centre. And there have been reports that Habibullah is being shifted to J&K to help the Centre in binging separatists to an understanding with New Delhi to end two decade long strife afflicting the Valley.
So the question is whether the Centre is trying to pander to the separatists’ wishes by involving negotiators like Habibullah. The exact answer to this may take yet some more time to unfold but indications are that now the Centre is too keen to engage with hardliners among the separatists like Geelani.
Not only the CIC called on him yesterday but when the Union Defence Minister AK Antony during his visit to Jammu on Tuesday announced that Army men might be less visible as civil police and paramilitary forces should mainly take over the duty of ensuring law and order in civilian areas. Geelani has in fact for long been calling for vacation of civilian spaces by members of the Centre’s armed forces where they have been getting entrenched, according to him, on one pretext or the other.
Though Geelani has not been very much impressed by the recent Government announcement regarding the withdrawal of about 30,000 troops from Jammu and Kashmir, the Centre’s move towards reduction in the troops’ deployment level in Kashmir is bound to take some of the punch out of the Hurriyat leader’s strong and bitter rhetoric.
Moreover, Geelani is now believed to be not so much in tune with Pakistan as has been the case in the past because Islamabad is under intense US pressure to take on militant Islamists, leaving little scope for it to back hardliners in Kashmir. And, thus, the Government here is better placed to identify issues and narrow down differences with Hurriyat leaders through what it prefers to call as quiet diplomacy.
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