Jammu, December 29
While the Peoples’ Conference, led by Mr Sajjad Lone, has finalised its roadmap on Kashmir, the Muslim League celebrated M.A. Jinnah’s birth anniversary for the first time in Kashmir indicating fluctuating tendencies among the separatists.
In the already fluid political atmosphere, the camp led by Mr Syed Ali Shah Geelani has adopted tough postures on the Kashmir problem but another separatist leader, Mr Yasin Mailk, chief of the JKLF, has been seen attending government functions. He attended a couple of functions organised by the cultural academy though he was yet to give up his slogan of azadi for Jammu and Kashmir.
The Peoples’ Conference stole the show over the PDP, which is yet to complete its document on self-rule, by announcing that its working committee at its recent meeting approved the roadmap on Kashmir prepared by Mr Sajjad Lone.
The roadmap is scheduled to be released on January 6, 2007. Though the main features of the solution to the problem envisaged by Mr Lone has been kept a guarded secret, sources close to him said today that it laid emphasis on limited azadi and did not favour the incorporation of Kashmir with Pakistan.
Mr Lone is not bothered about discussing his roadmap either with Pakistan or with Delhi but he wants to elicit peoples’ opinion on it so that his ideas could be submitted to India and Pakistan for consideration.
Informed sources said though the PDP had constituted a committee headed by Mr Muzaffar Hussain Baig, a former Deputy Chief Minister, it was not in a hurry to finalise the draft on self-rule. The PDP patron, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, wanted his plan on self-rule to be debated at the national and international levels so that a consensus was evolved.
Indications are that the self-rule document may be ready within next two months.
