All-party team concludes Jammu-Kashmir visit

JAMMU - A 39-member all-party delegation Wednesday concluded its three-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir and flew back to New Delhi in a special plane from here, an official source said.

The team led by union Home Minister P. Chidambaram arrived in Jammu Tuesday after spending one and a half days in Srinagar.

The delegation, which visited the state to get a sense of the ground situation before deciding on steps to defuse tensions, met a cross section of people here, including political groups and Kashmiri Hindu migrants and traders.

Besides Chidambaram, the delegation included Parliamentary Affairs Minister P.K. Bansal (Congress) as well as Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The delegation’s visit was necessitated by an unending cycle of stone throwing, clashes and killings. More than 100 people have been killed in the clashes since June 11.

Chidambaram’s predecessor Shivraj Patil had led such a delegation during the Amarnath land row in August 2008, and former deputy prime minister Devi Lal in March 1990.

Former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was a member of the first all-party delegation in 1990, when the militancy had started rattling the Kashmir Valley and the people were frenzied about “azadi” sentiment and the gunmen were hailed as “liberators”.

A meeting of Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) Sep 13 had decided to send the delegation to the state to assess the situation and suggest measures to find a way out to end the deadlock.