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In the right direction

LESS THAN TWO weeks in office, the PDP-Congress coalition Government headed by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in Jammu and Kashmir has in right earnest set about addressing itself to the task of reviewing cases of prolonged detention without trial — mostly political detenus — and the latest to be freed (on parole) is the senior Hurriyat leader and JKLF chief, Mohammad Yasin Malik. Originally held under POTA, Mr. Malik was upon being granted bail by a court re-arrested last May under the Public Safety Act. Indications are that another Hurriyat leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who is among the over 20 such political detenus the Government is reported to have identified for release, will also be set free soon. The release of political prisoners, which is a part of the policy formulation that the ruling coalition has outlined in its Common Minimum Programme for healing the "physical, psychological and emotional wounds inflicted by 14 years of militancy", has been received, not surprisingly, with some scepticism in certain quarters, particularly the National Conference and the BJP. These sections are inclined to see this development and the new Government's decision not to invoke POTA in the State as a recipe for heightened insurgency, with some even darkly hinting at a `deal' between the PDP and the secessionist forces.

What needs to be realised is that the rationale for these positive moves is rooted in the imperative of reaching out to the people, especially the alienated sections, by initiating a credible process of dialogue with a view to finding a political solution to the Kashmir imbroglio. After all, this precisely is what the popular mandate thrown up by the recent Assembly polls is all about. To be meaningful, such a dialogue has necessarily to be as broad-based and as inclusive as possible, not just confined to those elected to the new legislature. Without in any way detracting from the credibility of the recently concluded democratic exercise, which stood out for its fairness and transparency, or belittling the representative character of the new Assembly, one must say that it would be unrealistic and unwise to rubbish all the groups that boycotted the polls as having no locus standi or being irrelevant merely because of their non-participation. In fact, if the few initiatives of the `Track II' variety — some of them presumably with the blessings of New Delhi — aimed at getting the separatist groups to join the democratic mainstream had floundered, it was largely because of the Centre's ambivalence and tentativeness in its approach to the negotiation process, dictated more by its narrow partisan impulses, with the Farooq Abdullah regime playing its own political game and contributing in its own way to the scuttling of all such effort.

As for the Hurriyat itself, there has been a distinct and remarkably positive shift from its hard pro-Pakistani line in the wake of the global anti-terror campaign post-September 11, 2001, with most of the influential groups in the umbrella outfit coming out openly in favour of a political solution and against terrorist ways, and this attitudinal change appeared further reinforced after the assassination of Abdul Gani Lone. Given this and the ground reality that the Hurriyat is seen at least by a sizable segment of the Kashmiris as a group of honest and dependable interlocutors, it does make a lot of political sense that its leaders detained on poll eve should be set free as a necessary step for creating conditions conducive for a purposeful interaction. All this however is not to overlook or underrate the formidability of the hurdles that are bound to arise even before the first moves are made towards starting a dialogue. Not particularly known for its cohesiveness, the Hurriyat leadership is more than likely to find itself rather sharply divided in the new context of the PDP's rise to power. It is for the new Government to move forward skilfully and come up with imaginative measures essential for setting a dialogue in motion, and the Centre, for its part, needs to extend its full and unreserved cooperation to such endeavours.

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