By IANS,
Jammu : Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram is expected to announce some soft measures for Jammu and Kashmir when he makes a statement in parliament Wednesday, an informed source said.
The discussions were held Monday and Tuesday and more would be held Wednesday before Chidambaram’s statement in parliament. Some of the discussions included central government’s actions to restore peace and order in the state, said the source, who is in know of what may form the core of the statement.
The source said Chidambaram may announce a rehabilitation package for the youth, many of whom led the stone-throwing protests that resulted in clashes with the security forces. More than 40 people have been killed and several hundred wounded so far.
Nearly 1,000 security personnel, mostly of the Central Reserve Police Force, too have been injured, a fact that is buried under the fast speed of the violent incidents in the Kashmir Valley.
“It’s possible that the home minister may announce some kind of relief and rehabilitation for the former militants who were made to surrender, but the assurances given to them were not filled beyond a point. Those gaps are expected to be filled,” the source told IANS.
The central government may drop hints of some dialogue with a few sections of people and urge them to spell out their bottomlines, the source said.
These announcements, if those are made, would be based on the twin factors: Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s insistence that Jammu and Kashmir is a political problem, which needs to be tackled with political means, a thought process that is shared even by his main political rival, Peoples Democratic Party, that has otherwise been making things difficult for Abdullah from day one.
Secondly, of course, the sources indicated, the central government has gathered inputs from agencies and scholars who visited the valley in the past few weeks. The assessment revolves around the fact that political space in Kashmir needs to created and for that the central and state governments would have to be on the same line of thinking and action.