SRINAGAR: While calling for a lasting solution to the Kashmir issue, the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has said that the dispute could only be solved politically and not through economic packages.
He said that New Delhi had failed to understand the psyche of the Kashmiri people and that it has become “the main cause for distances between Centre and the State.”
“Of course economic and other packages help in calming down people but they can never be the lasting solution,” the Chief Minister said during the launch of a local daily, a local news agency KNS reports.
The Chief Minister called for a lasting solution of the issue which, he said, could address its “external dimension”.
Expressing displeasure over non-implementation of the interlocutors’ report, the Chief Minister warned New Delhi that in the future “nobody would dare to come forward to talk to them.”
“People know there has been no action on their recommendations or the report of former interlocutors. It would be difficult for them to trust any teams that could arrive here from Delhi.”
Omar further said that “people of Kashmir should not be given the signal that nobody takes notice of the issue unless they raise agitations.”
He was referring to the popular anti-India uprisings in 2008 and the one in 2010, after which New Delhi appointed a three-member group of interlocutors to design a political roadmap for Jammu and Kashmir.
“People should not be made to feel that if they dont raise noise or protests, there is no one to listen to them. Unlike in the past, New Delhi should take steps in right directions rather than waiting for the crisis to erupt again, like in 2010”, he said.
Kashmir has seen tens of thousands of killings since the late eighties when simmering discontent against Indian rule erupted into a full blown rebellion.
