Jammu, December 17 (Scoop News) – Chief Interlocutor Daleep Padgaonkar has categorically denied having criticized Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah or passing any remarks about his governance terming the newspaper reports complete fabrication.
Interacting with media here, Padgaonkar said “the remarks and certain quotations in the newspaper that have been attributed to me are fabrication from end to end. Not a single word attributed to me is correct”, he said.
He said “we are not here to pass judgments. We are here to fulfill our mandate and the mandate is to focus tightly on trying to evolve a broad consensus on political settlement of Jammu and Kashmir”. He said no judgments were passed. He called for viewing the interview he had with the journalist Syed Naqwi for drawing the actual conclusion and judging it fully.
Refuting the newspaper report regarding praising the PDP’s Self-Rule, Padgaonkar clarified that all he has said is “we have two documents-one produced by National Conference on Autonomy and the other produced by PDP on Self-rule. He said their purpose of meeting the people is to ask them to come up with detailed suggestions to facilitate a political settlement acceptable to all the three regions of the State and the communities living in each region.
Padgaonkar said that after their two visits, they have made a number of recommendations. Certain numbers of them have to be implemented by Central Government after vetting, he said adding that certain numbers of them have to be implemented by the state government.
The Chief interlocutor said that this is their 3rd visit in continuation of their mission. He said, “today we are in Jammu and tomorrow, we will be going to Poonch and Rajouri and meeting whole range of people there”. He said at the end of the visit they will meet media and give their impression.
Reiterating that their focus is to meet as many people as possible to ascertain their ideas about political settlement of the issue.
On a question about the recommendations made by the interlocutors, he said all of them have been published in the newspapers. He said these recommendations were in the nature of CBMs. “I do not think they can be a substitute for a political settlement”, he said adding “in order to facilitate a dialogue a certain number of CBMs are required. Accordingly, we made certain suggestions and the Government of India has been looking at them with great sympathy. We are convinced that these are going to be implemented”.