Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, Oct 28: The Centre and Jammu and Kashmir Governments will constitute two high-level Cells aimed at facilitating dialogue between Dineshwar Sharma, Special Representative of the Centre Government on J&K and various stakeholders in the State and continuously monitor progress of the talks.
“The Cells would be operational well before the first visit of Sharma to Jammu and Kashmir, which is expected to take place in first week of November,” official sources told the Excelsior.
The process for setting up high-powered Cells has already been initiated and they were likely to be in place shortly to coordinate with the Special Representative on various aspects of dialogue process in Jammu and Kashmir including his meetings with stakeholders across all three regions of the State.
The Cells, which were likely to be headed by top officials, would also coordinate with each other as well as the Special Representative to facilitate dialogue process in Jammu and Kashmir, which was set into motion by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday with the announcement of Dineshwar Sharma, a retired Intelligence Bureau (IB) Director, as the Special Representative of the Centre Government on J&K.
“By coordinating with the Special Representative, both in New Delhi as well as in Jammu and Kashmir, the Centre Government wants to give message about deep sincerity of the dialogue to stakeholders as well as the State Government,” sources said, adding it was in this context that Dineshwar Sharma has been conferred with the status of the Cabinet Secretary, which will place him above all the bureaucrats at Centre as well as Jammu and Kashmir.
According to sources, the Centre and the State Governments were also working out “various options” to facilitate dialogue between various stakeholders and the Special Representative for which “back channel diplomacy” was already on the job.
“All efforts were aimed at ensuring that present dialogue by the Special Representative in J&K, look completely different from previous such exercises especially those initiated during regimes of UPA-I and UPA-II headed by Dr Manmohan Singh,” sources pointed out and said: “through its various initiatives, the Centre Government was engaged in giving complete legitimacy to the current dialogue process”. They noted that it was in this context that the Centre Government has activated all its resources for facilitation of dialogue.
The UPA-I had announced five Working Groups on Jammu and Kashmir and held two Round Table Conferences, chaired by the then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. The Working Groups were headed by no less persons than Dr Hamid Ansari, who later went on to become Vice President of the country, Justice Sagheer Ahmed (a retired Judge), C Rangarajan, former Reserve Bank of India Governor among others. All of them had submitted their reports but virtually very little, or in some case no action, was initiated on reports of the Groups.
The UPA-II had nominated three Interlocutors on Jammu and Kashmir including Dileep Padgaonkar, who had passed away recently, Prof Radha Kumar and MM Ansari. They too had submitted their report to the then Union Home Minister but that too failed to attract any attention of the then Government.
It may be mentioned here that in an interview to a News Agency yesterday, Dineshwar Sharma had stated that he would like to go into all previous reports of Interlocutors as it would help him in the dialogue process. He also said that he was ready to meet all stakeholders in Jammu and Kashmir for dialogue as he wants to see an end to the violence and radicalization of youth to prevent the Valley from becoming another Syria or Yemen.
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