Malik, Geelani refuse to meet all-party team

MPs left after people raised pro-azadi slogans

Separatist leaders on Sunday refused to meet members of the all-party delegation who visited them in their individual capacity. Left party leaders Sitaram Yechury and D Raja, and JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav had to wait for 10 minutes outside the uptown Hyderpora residence of hardline Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Geelani, who refused to open the door.

“We came to hold talks and listen to his (Geelani’s) viewpoint. But he didn’t open the door,” Yechury told reporters outside Geelani’s home. Stating that only dialogue was the way to settle the issues, Yechury said, “Only through talks can we move forward.” The members were forced to leave the spot after some people started shouting anti-India and pro-freedom slogans.

Yechury, Raja and Yadav were also snubbed by incarcerated JKLF chief Yasin Malik at the Humhama police station, as he too refused to talk to them. “You see the situation outside. What can we talk about in such a situation?” Malik was quoted as saying by Yadav. AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi had a two-minute chat with moderate Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq at Chashm-e-Shahi sub-jail where he had gone to meet the separatist leader. Though Mirwaiz reportedly met Owaisi for a couple of minutes, he declined to hold a dialogue.

However, sources said Abdul Gani Bhat, a senior leader of moderate Hurriyat, held a meeting with Owaisi, Yechury, Raja and Yadav at his residence. “I thanked the delegation members for visiting my home but told them that it is a collective decision of separatist leadership not to hold any dialogue with them,” Bhat was quoted as saying by a local news agency.

The separatists had in the morning rejected Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s invitation to meet the delegation, which she had sent on Saturday evening as the president of the ruling People’s Democratic Party and not as a chief minister.

Terming the offer as “deceitful”, the separatist leaders in a joint statement said: “These deceitful methods of crisis management through Parliamentary delegations and track-two diplomacy only prolong the sufferings of the people and cannot take the place of a genuine transparent agenda-based dialogue to address the core issue of the peoples’ right to self-determination in J&K.” However, despite clear refusal by the separatists, the Opposition leaders in the all-party delegation had reportedly said they would make the effort to reach out even if they (Hurriyat leaders) refuse to meet them. National Conference leader and former chief minister Omar Abdullah, while criticising Mehbooba, said the state government should have released the separatist leaders first if she was serious about talks.