Delhi allows pro-India Kashmiri leaders to visit Pakistan

India has approved a proposal to send a delegation comprising pro-India members of the Kashmir Legislature to Pakistan as a goodwill gesture.

Media reports say that a few months ago, the presiding officers of both the houses, Legislative Council Chairman Amrit Malhotra, and Legislative Assembly Speaker Muhammad Akbar Lone had forwarded a written proposal to Chief Minister Omar Abdullah seeking approval of a “good will delegation” of legislators to visit Pakistan, KMS reported.

The chief minister forwarded the proposal to the government of India for approval. New Delhi recently gave a nod to the proposal thus clearing the way for the delegation’s visit to Pakistan, the reports added.

After the clearance, the Law Department of Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) has asked the presiding officers to furnish the names of at least three members, each from both houses, who would be part of this delegation to visit Pakistan.

Apart from these six members, Malhotra, Speaker Mubarak Gul, Law Minister Saifullah Mir, Law Secretary Farhat Tasneem, Assembly Secretary Mohammad Ramzan and LC Secretary Mohammad Ashraf Mir would also be part of this delegation, the reports added.

Political observers, however, believe that selective permission to only the pro-India Kashmiri leaders will not help make a progress on resolution of the Kashmir dispute unless India allows all the Kashmiri leaders irrespective of their political ideologies to pay a visit to Pakistan and Azad Kashmir.

They say that New Delhi until now has been reluctant to grant permission to freedom leaders like Syed Ali Gilani to visit Pakistan to even offer condolences over the death of former Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad with his family members in Peshawar.