Kashmir interlocutors to submit report today

The three-member Central panel on Jammu Kashmir will Wednesday submit its report to Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, after which the government will examine the recommendations of a "roadmap" suggested by them.

Announced exactly a year ago, the team of three interlocutors Dilip Padgaonkar, Radha Kumar and M M Ansari have completed their report within the time-frame of one year given by the government.

Declining to share the highlights of the report, Padgaonkar said the interlocutors had visited all parts of the state and met a cross section of people to understand their view points.

"We have suggested a roadmap at the end of the report and it was up to the government to carry forward the recommendations," Padgaonkar told reporters here.

The interlocutors' panel had met nearly 700 delegations during the past one year besides holding three round-table conferences and attending three gatherings.

The report represents almost all voices of the state, Padgaonkar said.

Asked whether the voice of separatist Hurriyat leaders, who chose not to meet them, would be reflected, he said "we have taken into account both mainstream and off-stream opinions and in particular various inputs made by the both Hurriyat factions."

Padgaonkar said "we have endeavoured to address all aspects on Kashmir -- political, economic, social and cultural."

Asked whether the panel faced any problem in its work, Padgaonkar said "as promised at the time of appointment, there were no red lines drawn anywhere."

Padgaonkar, a respected journalist, said the mandate was that the group will hold the widest possible consultations with all sections of opinion in the state and the focus of the dialogue was to seek as large area of agreement as it could get to arrive at a comprehensive, political settlement of the Kashmir problem.

"We had complete freedom everywhere and there was no interference," he said.

Noted academician Radha Kumar had earlier been engaged in back-channel discussions with moderate Hurriyat Chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani but after her appointment as the Centre's interlocutor, the separatist leaders stayed away from her.

The third member of the team, M M Ansari, professor and Director at the Hamdard University and an educationist and economist before becoming an Information Commissioner, was a surprise inclusion in the team as he had no association with Kashmir during his tenure as a bureaucrat.