New Delhi: The Jammu and Kashmir government asserted that the "autonomy talks" with
the Centre's interlocutor and former Union Minister Arun Jaitley would help in
reducing alienation of the people of the state from the rest of the country even as
the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) sources maintained the talks were
confined only to greater devolution of power to the state.
Maintaining that the state government was not stubborn on its demand for restoration
of pre-1953 status, representative of the state government and senior-most minister
in Farooq Abdullah government, Ghulam Mohideen Shah, said that the people of the
state needed to be convinced that they had not been robbed of anything.
Shah said that several amendments were made after Independence and the people only
wanted to have some of the earlier provisions to be restored. "We hope that
something constructive will come out of the talks on autonomy with the Centre," he
said.
In the first ever round of talks after the issue was kept on back-burner for two
years, Shah, who first had one-to-one meeting with Jaitley before the two met
assisted by officials, explained the rationale behind the demand for autonomy.
"This will definitely end the alienation of the people and strengthen the
relations," Shah said and added that, "The demand was within the framework of the
Constitution."
State Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah also expressed satisfaction on the beginning of
talks and said, "This was what we had been demanding for last two years."
To a question whether he hoped that the talks would yield result before the Assembly
polls scheduled later this year, he said, "Well, I don't hope so as the process has
just begun and will definitely take some time."
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sunil Shastri said the talks should in no
way be linked to National Conference's autonomy demand but were held only to discuss
devolution of more powers to the state.
Shastri claimed that Jaitley had agreed to accept his appointment as the Centre's
interlocutor only on the condition that talks would be held solely to discuss
devolution of more powers to the state government and not autonomy.
The date for holding the talks was discussed by Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and
senior ministers in the NDA government, the sources said.
PTI
