Jammu, October 14
Commenting on poor voter turnout in Pahalgam and Batamaloo during yesterday’s polling, senior APHC leader, Abdul Gani Bhat said, “It clearly indicates that people are for a permanent settlement of the Kashmir issue.”

“People in Kashmir have never believed that election, whether to the Assembly or to the Lok Sabha, was a solution to the Kashmir issue,” he told this correspondent today.

When asked to comment whether over 58 per cent polling percentage in the two Assembly constituencies in the Jammu region indicated that the only issue to be settled pertained to the Kashmir valley, Prof Bhat said, “Ultimately whatever solution is to be found will cover the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir.”

He said, “We have not yet decided whether to meet the Union Home Minister, Mr Shivraj Patil, during his visit to the state next month.”

He said, “It has to be decided by the executive committee of the APHC. The meeting has to be convened by the chairman, Molvi Umar Farooq, who has returned to Srinagar from his recent tour of some foreign countries.”

Prof Bhat said, “We are not in a hurry to convene the meeting of the executive committee. It can be convened after one week, one month or one year.”

This indicates that following a growing threat to separatists who are in favour of a dialogue from the militants, moderate elements in the separatist camp wish to adopt a wait-and-watch policy.

Jammu, October 14
A former Union Minister, Prof Chaman Lal Gupta, has urged the Congress-led UPA government to handle the problems in Kashmir with great care as the follies of the past have already complicated the situation and the people of this state have had to suffer heavily.

Objecting to some of the recent statements of the senior leaders of the Congress and its allies, Professor Gupta today said that it appeared that they had not learnt a lesson from their past follies and had forgotten even the resolve of Parliament.

In this regard, he particularly referred to the recent statement of a senior Congress leader and former Union Minister, Mr Salman Khursheed. He said the Centre must first gauge as to what could be achieved from the elements who had developed vested interests in the continuance of violence and terrorism.

The BJP leader said it was deplorable that the Congress had not learnt lessons from its wrong and foul play with the democratic process, and it was a matter of concern that with the support of the police and the government machinery, now they were encouraging nepotism.

Much of the problems in Jammu and Kashmir had been created because of an undemocratic and an unrealistic approach adopted by the Congress and its allies during all these years in the name of special status the BJP leader asserted.