Padgaonkar, Radha Kumar, Ansari named Kashmir interlocutors

NEW DELHI - Naming eminent journalist Dilip Padgaonkar, Information Commissioner M.M. Ansari and academician Radha Kumar as the interlocutors who would re-start peace talks in troubled Jammu and Kashmir, the government Wednesday urged Kashmiris to engage with them.

Home Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters here that “we have appointed the group of interlocutors”, calling the three “very credible people”.

“We may add one more interlocutor later,” the home minister said.

Asked why the panel had no political person, Chidambaram said they “have a political persona”. “All of them are well known to the people of India. They are credible and have a good track record,” he said.

The home minister said the terms and references of the panel would be to hold talks with all shades of opinion, including mainstream political parties and separatists, “especially with youth and students”.

“I would appeal to all people of Jammu and Kashmir to engage with the interlocutors,” he added.

The group will cover the views of all the three regions — Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir.

“They will talk to all shades of opinion in Jammu and Kashmir as early as possible,” Chidambaram said.

Two of the three interlocutors were involved in the Kashmir peace process earlier at different times. Padgaonkar was member of the Kashmir Committee led by eminent lawyer and now Bharatiya Janata Party MP Ram Jethmalani.

Radha Kumar, who heads the Nelson Mandela Institute of Peace in Jamia Millia Islamia, was engaged in back-channel discussions with moderate Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani. She was in the valley recently and had visited Geelani at a hospital in Srinagar where he was undergoing treatment.

Noted educationist and economist Ansari was a professor and director at the Hamdard University before becoming the Information Commissioner.

The move, which Chidambaram said was a “clear demonstration of the seriousness on the part of the government of India” to solve the problems in the state, comes in the wake of renewed unrest in Kashmir Valley in the last four months, which saw over 100 civilians killed.

The decision to have a new group of interlocutors was taken at the Cabinet Committee on Security meeting chaired by Prime Manmohan Singh last month.

Over 100 people have been killed in clashes between protesters and security forces in Kashmir Valley in the last four months.