INSIDE KASHMIR: Interlocutors meet Governor, Jammu lawyers

Jammu: The three-member team of Interlocutors on Jammu and Kashmir Dileep Padgaonkar, Prof Radha Kumar and M M Ansari, Saturday held a detailed meeting with members of Bar Association Jammu.

Prominent Supreme Court lawyer, and senior Congress leader, Advocate Ashok Bhan had been specially invited by the Bar to participate in the meeting.

The Jammu Bar President, B S Salathia, presented a detailed memo to the interlocutors and highlighted the ‘discrimination’ of Jammu region in the matter of politics, employment and allocation of funds.

During interactive session, several speakers reiterated Salathi’s assertion and demanded end of regional ‘disparity’.

Padgaonkar in his speech said, “We have not submitted final recommendations to the center yet and all media reports are speculative in this regard. We have come here to listen to the Bar Association members with an open mind in order to enlist their suggestions in our report.”

Ashok Bhan thanked the people of Jammu for having accepted the large population of Kashmiri pandits into social and economic fold of Jammu region.

He gave his experience about the Kashmir regional yearning for peace and peaceful settlement of Kashmir imbroglio and emphasized upon GoI to address the grievances of Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir before embarking on the finality of any solution which will respect the aspirations of all the 3-regions.

He said that legal and constitution relationship between the state and the center were governed by Article 1 of Indian Constitution and section 3 of state constitution. “Besides this J&K enjoys special status as a distinct constitutional entity,” he added.

The three-member team also met the Governor, N N Vohra, at Raj Bhavan here today. This was their fifth meeting with him.

During their two hour meeting with the Governor, the Interlocutors held wide ranging discussions on issues emerging from their meetings with various shades of opinion during their present visit to the State.