After one year exercise interlocutors to submit report on Oct 12

Srinagar: After one year of hectic exercise the three-member team of Kashmir interlocutors are submitting their final report to the central government on October 12.
The report will be submitted to the Union Home Minister P Chidambaram by the panel which consists of eminent journalist Dileep Padgaonkar, academician Radha Kumar and former Information Commissioner M.M. Ansari.
Talking to KNS Padgonkar confirmed that they will submit the report on October 12. “We are submitting our report to Home Minster on 12th of this month, Padgaonkar told KNS over phone from New Delhi.
He said important points like socio-economic conditions of people, rising unemployment, people-to-people contact across the Line of Control and other Confidence Building Measures have been incorporated in the final report.
However, he said, main focus of the report is on political settlement of the Kashmir issue. “Our main focus is on political settlement of the dispute,” he added.
Asked whether there is mention of restoration of autonomy in the report, Padgonkar said, “It is confidential and all I can say is that our main focus has been on political settlement of the issue.”
However sources told KNS that the report carries a special mention of youth and the problems they face with regard to their career and future. Pertinently the one year term of panel comes to end on Wednesday.
The panel was constituted by the Central Government after last year’s summer uprising. The panel had been announced by Home Minster P. Chidambaram during the high level visit of All Party delegation which he was heading in the mid September.
The interlocutors paid first visit to Valley on October 12, 2010. The team thereafter visited the state 12 times during which they intreracted people from all the 22 districts of the state.
During the one year term interlocutors met with Governor N N Vohra, Chief Minster Omar Abdullah, Peoples Democratic Party president Mehbooba Mufti and other politicians, social organizations, journalists and students.
Radha Kumar also had a chance to meet the former Prime Minster of Pakistan-administered-Kashmir Barrister Sultan Mahmood when the latter had come to Srinagar to attend marriage ceremony of his businessman friend Zahoor Watali last month.
-KNS