In a significant development, prominent political leaders from Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, including Farooq Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti gave a miss to a roundtable conference on Jammu and Kashmir organized by political analyst and Track II diplomat OP Shah in New Delhi.
Besides Farooq and Mehbooba, other political leaders who had been invited to the conference but didn’t attend include Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami of Communist Party of India-Marxist, Justice (Retd) Hasnain Masoodi, National Conference Lok Sabha member from South Kashmir and Altaf Bukhari, chairman Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP).
Political observers described as significant the absence of senior politicians of Kashmir from the roundtable conference organized by OP Shah, who heads ‘Centre for Peace and Progress’. Topic of the conference was ‘Another Look at Article 370 and 35A’.
Muzaffar Shah, a prominent leader of People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) and senior vice president of Awami National Conference, con-firmed to the media on telephone from New Delhi that Abdullahs, Mehbooba Mufti and Tarigami were not present at the meeting.
Muzaffar Shah said the roundtable conference called for restoration of Statehood to Jammu and Kashmir, conduct of Assembly elections immedi-ately, rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits to Kashmir and listening to cases filed in the Indian Supreme Court on Articles 370 and 35A.
Former Minister and Nationalist Panthers Party (NPP) President Harsh Dev Singh told the media that besides Statehood and Assembly elections, the conference also took up a series of other issues.—KMS
