No sign of interlocutors for Kashmir crisis yet

The government is still struggling to appoint interlocutors to defuse the Kashmir crisis. There is intense speculation in the power corridors of New Delhi that senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh and minister in prime minister’s office Prithviraj Chavan may be selected for the job, but both denied any such possibility.

They have different reasons to not accept the assignment. Sources close to Digvijay ruled out the possibility of the AICC general secretary and Union home minister P Chidambaram working together. Their relationship is so strained that Digvijay preferred to attend a programme in Mumbai to listening to

“Chidambaram at the specially convened meeting of the Congress working committee to discuss Kashmir and Ayodhya yesterday [on Tuesday].”

Digvijay and Chidambaram are not on the same page on several issues and have had near-spats in public in the past. “How can they work together to resolve the Kashmir problem?” wondered a close confidante of Digvijay.

Sources said neither the government, nor the party high command had even remotely indicated to him a role in the Valley. “So far, nobody has approached me” is what Digvijay told his confidants.

He is of the firm view that the chairman of the panel of interlocutors must have the confidence of the Union home minister, in addition to that if the prime minister and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi.

Prithviraj Chavan, who is AICC general secretary in-charge of Kashmir affairs, was also surprised to hear that his name was doing the rounds for an interlocutor’s job. Sources close to him told DNA “I am already doing the job. What’s new in it ?”