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Hurriyat to continue dialogue process: Mirwaiz
Walkout by NC over allocation of funds
Padroo’s body exhumed, DNA samples taken
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BSF jawan commits suicide
Pilgrim dies in mishap
Couple found murdered
Grenade hurled at APHC’s office
Cong, PDP likely to contest 3 seats
Judicial probe if HC Judge available: Azad
Talks soon on migrants’ return: CM
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Hurriyat to continue dialogue process: Mirwaiz
Srinagar, February 1 He was addressing public meetings on his return here this afternoon from Pakistan where he had talks with President Pervez Musharraf and other top political leaders on the Kashmir issue. Addressing supporters at Hyderpora crossing and at the party headquarters at Rajouri Kadalal, Mr Miwaiz said that the Hurriyat had taken a “bold decision”. Despite threats by certain elements, the Hurriyat would continue with the dialogue process, he said. This was in accordance with the wishes and aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Mr Mirwaiz, who headed a three-member delegation to Pakistan, returned here today with Mr Bilal Lone while Prof Abdul Ghani Bhat has extended his stay in Islamabad by a few days. The leaders arrived here to a warm welcome with thousands of supporters of constituent groups at the airport. The majority of the supporters were from Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s Awami Action Committee and Bilal Lone’s Peoples Conference. Vehicles carrying the supporters were not allowed to go beyond Hyderpora crossing, about five kms short of the airport due to security reasons. While Mr Bilal Lone drove to his Sanatnagar residence, Mr Mirwaiz drove to Rajouri Kadalal where the head office of Awami Action Committee is located. The hardline faction of the Hurriyat and other organisations had opposed the Indo-Pak-Hurriyat talks. A general strike was observed in Kashmir on January 15 before the departure of Hurriyat leaders for Pakistan. There was resentment among these groups against Mr Mirwaiz’s January 20 call for an end to the armed struggle and support for a dialogue to resolve the Kashmir issue.
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Walkout by NC over allocation of funds
Jammu, February 1 The question, tabled by Mr Ali Mohammad Sagar (NC), generated a lot of heat as members on both sides traded charges. The unsatisfied NC members trooped out of the House as the question listed on the top consumed about 45 minutes of the question hour. The NC members protested that the minister was unable to give a satisfactory reply to their supplementaries. Mr Sagar wanted to know the criteria fixed by the government for spending the special grant of Rs 24,000 crore made by the Prime Minister for the reconstruction of the infrastructure in the state. Besides, he complained that the minister was unable to identify the areas where the annual budgetary grants had been spent during the past four years. Members on the treasury benches accused the NC of criticising the government just for the sake of criticism. The Speaker, Mr Tara Chand, asked the NC members to move a motion for discussion on the issue in case they were not satisfied with the reply of the minister. The minister said that against the original cost of Rs 3316 crore for 14 reconstruction plan projects, the revised estimate was of the order of Rs 3787 crore. He said the cost of construction of the Moughal road had escalated to Rs 254.79 crores against the original estimates of Rs 159 crore. In a written reply to Mr Mian Altaf and Mohammad Aslam Khan, the Minister for Roads and Buildings said that 40 km of motorable stretch of the Moughal road had been constructed. An expenditure of Rs 63.87 crore was incurred on the project up to December last. He said the 84 km long road would connect the border districts of Poonch and Rajouri with the Kashmir valley. Members of the Panthers Party, BJP and JSM lodged a noisy protest as soon as the House assembled in the morning by raising the issue of the IRCON inviting tenders for the construction of the rail line from only the Kashmir-based contractors. Mr Harshdev Singh, Mr Balwant Singh Mankotia, Mr Faqir Nath, Mr Yashpal Kaundal (all Panthers Party), Mr Jugal Kishore (BJP) and Mr Ashwani Kumar (JSM) accused IRCON of discriminating with the contractors of Jammu by keeping them out of the bid.
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Padroo’s body exhumed, DNA samples taken Srinagar, February 1 This followed reports of disappearance of Abdul Rahman Padroo of Kokernag in Anantnag district from Batamaloo, Srinagar, on December 8 last year, with investigations further leading to his alleged death in a fake encounter in the Ganderbal area, near here, on December 9. Investigations into the disappearance of the carpenter from south Kashmir had led to the involvement of Special Operations Group (SOG) of the state police in the killing. It was alleged that Paddar was killed in an encounter at Waskur, Ganderbal, and buried at Batapora, Sumbal. He was identified as Abu Hafiz, a Lashkar-e-Toiba militant from Multan, Pakistan. The government on Sunday ordered an inquiry into the case under the supervision of DIG, Police, Central Kashmir Range, Farooq Ahmad. Senior Superintendent of Police and Deputy Superintendent of Police Ganderbal (SOG) were also attached to the Inspector General of Police, Kashmir Range, while 14 others, most of them SOG personnel and counter-insurgents, were taken into custody in this connection. “The body was identified by family members” of Abdul Rahman Paddar, DIG Ahmad said on the spot. The post-mortem was conducted on the spot and samples for DNA were taken by a two-member team of experts from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Chandigarh, he said. The team of forensic experts had arrived here this morning to take samples for carrying out DNA tests to confirm the identity of Paddar. They would submit their report within 30 to 45 days. After the identification of the body by his father Ghulam Rasool Paddar and other family members, it was handed over to them and later taken to his native place, Larnoo, Kokernag, in south Kashmir district of Anantnag. Samples were also taken from the family members of the deceased for matching with those of the exhumed body, the police said. Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters took to the streets in the town, demanding a CBI probe into the killing. A shutdown was observed in Sumbal as hundreds poured onto streets demanding a CBI probe into the killing.
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Jammu, February 1 B.B. Thappa, a barber in the force, took his colleague’s gun from the barracks and shot himself in the R S Pora sector of Jammu district, officials said. The police has registered a case and sent the body for a post-mortem examination, they said, adding that they were yet to ascertain the reason behind the extreme step. — PTI
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Pilgrim dies in mishap
Jammu, February 1 The police said the pilgrims, hailing from New Delhi and Faridabad (Haryana), were on their way to Mata Vaishnodevi shrine when the accident occurred. The deceased has been identified as Rohit of New Delhi. The injured were shifted to hospital. —
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Couple found murdered
Srinagar, February 1 Shahzaman Khan and his wife Hatim Jan were found dead with their throats slit at Manigah village. They were killed by unidentified assailants with sharpedged weapons, they said. —
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Grenade hurled at APHC’s office
Srinagar, February 1 The police here said the grenade was hurled from the main road inside the premises of the Hurriyat Conference, which exploded in its lawns at 10:20 pm last night. No one was injured in the explosion. But a parked vehicle was damaged. Damage was also caused to the windowpanes of the building and an adjacent complex. Two underground outfits, the Save Kashmir Movement (SKM) and hitherto unknown group, the Al-Nifaz, have claimed the responsibility for the attack. Kamran Aslam, a spokesman for the SKM and Abu Baker of the Al-Nifaz spoke to some local newspaper offices owning the responsibility here. This is the second such attack in the past three weeks after the Mirwaiz-led APHC decided to visit Pakistan for talks with President, Pervez Musharraf and other political leaders as part of the dialogue to find solution to the Kashmir problem. A strike called by the hardline faction of Hurriyat Conference led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani and supported by the Hizbul Mujahideen and others in protest against the Indo-Pak-Hurriyat talks was also observed on January 17, the day when Hurriyat leaders left here for Pak visit. They included former chairman, Prof Abdul Ghani Bhat and Bilal Lone. The Save Kashmir Movement (SKM) had owned responsibility of attack on Mirwaiz’s house at Nageen, Hazratbal on January 15, two days before the departure of three-member delegation of the Hurriyat Conference from here. The grenade fired from distance fell into the kitchen garden of a nearby house without hurting anyone. Reacting to the attack on its party’s office here last night, its spokesman said such attempts would not hinder peace process. He said that the APHC would continue struggling for peace adding such attacks were against peace between India and Pakistan.
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Cong, PDP likely to contest 3 seats
Jammu, February 1 Although a formal decision on the sharing of seats among the ruling coalition partners is yet to be taken, the two main allies are learnt to have reached a broad consensus of sharing three seats each and leaving two for the Opposition National Conference (NC) that is the largest single party in the Assembly with 25 seats. The NC is likely to win two seats. However, it will be the main loser, as even after winning two seats, its strength in the Council will get reduced to six from the existing nine as its five members are among those retiring this month. The NC sharks are, however, pinning their hopes on cross voting by the ruling coalition partners as had happened during the election of MLCs two years ago. Initially there was a tussle among the Congress and the PDP over the sharing of seats, but it appears now that both have reconciled on sharing three seats each. But the mood of the other coalition partners would play a crucial role in the election. The chairman of the council, Mr Abdul Rashid Dar, who is also retiring, was elected on the NC symbol but was expelled from the party when he put the controversial Womens' Bill in deep freeze. Octogenarian Congress stalwart, Ghulam Rasool Kar is likely to be given the ticket again. Mr Abdul Rehman Takroo of the CPM will also vacate the seat. The forthcoming retirement of members has generated a lot of activity in the Congress and PDP camps, in particular, as a number of aspirants have started staking claim for the ticket. A number of aspirants in the Congress party are these days seen glued to Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad in the hope of getting a seat. Certain senior Congressmen have organised public meetings in their respective areas in the past few days to show their strength to the party bosses. A seat in the council is also to be filled through nomination.
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Padroo’s Custodial Death
Jammu, February 1 “I will first write to the High Court Chief Justice and then it all depends on the availability of a judge,” the Chief Minister said in the the Legislative Council, stressing that a parallel probe into the incident has already been initiated by a high-level police team led by DIG Farooq Ahmed. Mr Azad today said that the inquiry into the killing, either by a High Court Judge or at the DIG level, would be completed in three months. The Chief Minister was answering the discussion on the issue which was raised by members of the Legislative Council cutting across party lines - Ghulam Nabi Lone, Bilal Ahmed Khan Lodhi, Abdul Ghani Vakil, Ved Prakash Gupta, Syed Basharat Ahmed Bukhari, Nizam-ud-din Bhat, Prof Bhim Singh and Ashok Kumar Sharma. Initiating the discussion under Rule 60-A of the Council proceedings, Mr Lone said that human rights violations were continuing and that several persons across the state were still missing and their fate was not known. The Chief Minister did not rule out the possibility of security forces killing for rewards. He said that such cops would not be spared. Syed Basharat Ahmed Bukhari of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) said that 79 inquiries into alleged fake encounters or custodial deaths had officially been announced since 1990. But the fact-finding reports in only 35 cases had come out, while the fate of the rest was not known. “50 per cent militancy will vanish from the valley if legal procedures and the Constitution are properly followed by the authorities concerned,” Prof Bhim Singh of the Panthers Party said. Stating that it was very vital to find out the reason for increasing deaths in judicial custody, Ms Sakeena Itroo of the NC said killings and disappearances were regularly taking place. “Do not hide guilty cops,” she added. However, Arvinder Singh and Farida Mir of the ruling Congress hailed the Chief Minister for ordering the probe into the death of Abdul Rehman Padroo, adding that the graph of terrorist activities had significantly come down in the present regime.
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Talks soon on migrants’ return: CM
Jammu, February 1 Over 1,000 families have already given their consent for return, provided security and employment were given to them, he said in reply to a question posed by Panthers Party’s Prof Bhim Singh in the Legislative Council. “The Central and the state government are committed to the safe and dignified return of Kashmiri migrants for which various steps are being taken to create a peaceful atmosphere in the valley,” the Chief Minister said. He added that parties wanted the return of Kashmiri migrants to the valley for which a two-day meeting with a delegation from the Centre would soon be held.
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